


for ourselves and our posterity

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, West Wing AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 16:52:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 24,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6478198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And thus changes the course of an administration, with five words: <i>IT’S NOT, BUT IT CAN BE.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Last summer I took prompts for what I suppose was a bit of a fandom experiment: write a fic based solely on what people prompted me to write in that story. And thus the Newsroom's West Wing AU was born. As you'll notice fairly quickly, most of the chapters aren't really chapters, but short tumblr ficlet drabbles. A few of them are longer -- thousand words or more. But together they create a somewhat cohesive narrative, though with definite gaps. I did go into this with a timeline planned, just to keep myself from contradicting previous prompt fills. This AU does posit itself as a sequel to TWW, but I think you can get by if you haven't watched it. 
> 
> This is simply an archive of those prompt fills, in chronological order, with some previously unpublished material that I had worked on in my spare time.
> 
> The title is from my favorite line in the Constitution, in the Preamble: "...and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

The mechanical hiss of the ventilator ploughs on -- she’s barely alive. The pneumonia is fungal and there’s a PICC line in her arm, an IV pumping her full of drugs of last resort, and two chest drains that empty out into containers at the side of her hospital bed. Her pulse is thready and weak, her skin translucent and ash-grey. She was flown in from Landstuhl to Walter Reed already half-dead, and half-dead she remains, her body tucked into a sequestered ward with quiet nurses whose shoes pass silently over the tile floor. 

The next step, if her blood work comes back strong enough, is surgical debridement of her lungs. 

Jim Harper sits and MacKenzie McHale’s bedside, and wraps her rosary around her fingers. He doesn’t know any of the Catholic prayers or mysteries, but he figures that it couldn’t hurt.

“I voted for him,” he tells her. She was awake earlier, but only barely and still under sedation. The doctors tell him she won’t remember much of these weeks, if she remembers any of them at all. “I thought you’d want to know that. I voted for your guy. If he lets me down, it’s all on you. But uh – you’ve never steered me wrong before. So maybe McAvoy won’t be as disappointing as he has been to date.” 

Will McAvoy defeats Matt Santos’ 2010 re-election campaign, 292 electoral votes to Santos’ 246; wins Jim’s home state of Delaware in a choice bit of electioneering devised by Arnie Vinick and Charlie Skinner, but loses Nebraska. 

MacKenzie McHale wakes up, eyes clear and bright, four days later.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s supposed to be Mac in the White House with him, in the office that Charlie has shoved some high-level political operative into. Will can’t even remember the man’s name, doubts he’ll learn it by the time he quits in three months’ time, or however long will be deemed respectable. He doesn’t even know why Charlie appointed a Chief of Staff; he performs the job well-enough without the title, and there have been enough presidents who have made do without them. 

Like Carter.

(Will thinks that might be the reason.)

He’s elected ( _ha_ ) to not change over much of the decor from Santos’ presidency; Matt had Helen to help with all of this. Will is fairly certain that if he shoved White House interior design decisions onto Charlie, it might be the two fingers of bourbon that breaks the alcoholic’s back. And it’s not like he cares much, all the particulars are here regardless. The walls are oval, the seal is on the carpet, the Resolute desk stands gleaming and proud at the head of the room.

It just feels so… empty. 

This was Mac’s idea, first budding in her infuriating mind after he won his second term in the Senate. And by the time she dumped him his presidential aspirations had caught notice of too many party players for him to back down, and Charlie had swooped in… and two hours ago he stood in front of God and country, put his hand on Bible lent out from the diocese of Lincoln, and became the third Catholic president of the United States of America.

( _The Republican Kennedy,_ when the press is feeling kind. _The Right’s Hack Answer to Bartlet,_ when they’re not. He’s pretty sure the latter was something that must have come out of Josh Lyman’s mouth during the primaries.) 

The McAvoy Administration. 

He feels like laughing; what the fuck does any of this mean if MacKenzie isn’t here? He pulls a cigarette out from the pack hidden in the interior pocket of his suit jacket. Takes a slow drag, and walks around the back of the desk. Sits down. Exhales. Makes a note to ask one of his secretaries for an ashtray. 

_ Where the fuck even is she? _ he wonders. The image of her in bed with Brian Brennan has long-eclipsed any questions he’s had about whatever Santos has had her doing in Kazakhstan and China. But now Will wonders what Mac has been doing that even as a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations committee he couldn’t know about. 

Briefly, he considers asking for MacKenzie McHale’s CIA file as his first act in office.

Instead he lights another cigarette off the first, leans back in the chair, and waits for someone else to tell him what to do. 


	3. Chapter 3

The McAvoy Administration was dead on arrival, pronounced by every policy institute and think tank in the Beltway. 

The President was popular enough, of course, it’s how he’d gotten elected: by not offending anyone. It buoyed his favorables through the first hundred days, but eventually Americans would notice that the White House was doing nothing and would continue to do nothing. Nothing of substance, that is. As it stands, no one will be naming any middle schools after President McAvoy. If anything, he’ll go down in history as only the second president without a formal First Lady and not much else. 

Which is why Special Adviser to the President Charlie Skinner picks up the phone in March 2011 and makes a call to a certain recently-unemployed and former NATO Parliamentary Delegate MacKenzie McHale and invites her to a stump speech at Northwestern.

And thus changes the course of an administration, with five words.

_ IT’S NOT, BUT IT CAN BE. _


	4. Chapter 4

“The President is coming back from Camp David without having a single clue that Charlie’s brought me here to--”

“I’m sorry, Ms. McHale.” Maggie shifts uncomfortably on her feet, eyes darting about through the mostly-empty West Wing.

“The secret service is going to rocket launch me out of the building when he sees me,” Mac groans. Maybe she should leave now, and just slowly crawl out of the Beltway and into a lifetime of obscurity and alcohol like previously planned. Then she remembers Charlie, and the fact that Jim is currently trying to get through security himself, and she doubles down. “And it’s MacKenzie. You’re the President’s…”

Maggie rocks back on her heels, wringing her hands. “Well, I’m his personal aide. But all his junior secretaries quit three weeks ago and Kendra is overworked and Don has been having me work with him since most of the special assistants also quit three weeks ago, so I guess I’m—”

Mac does the administrative calculus in her head.

“Special senior assistant to the Chief of Staff.”

“Not really,” Maggie rushes to reassure her. “The President doesn’t even -- he thinks my name is Ellen.”

Mac nods. “It’s Maggie.”                                                

“I know that, and you know that, but – isn’t it the President who decides who’s on his staff?”

“I’m the Chief of -- well, _if_ I’m the Chief of _Staff_ , that involves the hiring and firing of staff. Which includes you.” She sighs, folding her arms under her chest. And then wonders where Don went to, and where the hell Jim is.

Maggie kindly offers her a seat and to put her luggage in the empty Chief of Staff’s office, which Mac declines, instead sitting in one of the chairs outside the Oval and clutching nervously at the arms.

She’s going to get fired immediately, she knows, but at least she’ll get to see Will one last time before going off to wherever people go when their lives finish falling apart.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s going to go to the Oval, grab what he needs to hole himself away in the mansion for the weekend, and not speak to anyone until tomorrow. Charlie can send Mac the fuck away, potentially back to Naval intelligence or wherever the fuck she’s spent the past three years so goddamn fucking far away from him.

( _She’s exhausted. Not like at the end of a long day. Mentally and physically exhausted. She’s been shot at in three different countries. She wants to come home, but there’s no job for her at the DoD, no job for her at the Pentagon, no job for her at State! MacKenzie! Ask any ten people in Washington and eight would tell you MacKenzie McHale is the best political and intelligence operative anyone could ask to have running their staff and the other two would be stupid!)_

Rampaging through the West Wing like a thunderstorm usually does the trick, but since apparently his staff has decided to stop being his staff…

He’s still pissed, so it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters at all.

And then he sees her. For a swelling, endless moment _everything_ matters and he feels his feet stop carrying him forward. And he feels everything he’s hidden under stifling anger for three long years.

Then she pulls herself to her feet.

“Hi, Mr. President,” she says, nowhere near as awkward as she should be with the circumstances. “It’s nice to see you.”


	6. Chapter 6

It becomes immediately apparent that almost everyone in the Situation Room knows her as the NATO delegate cum CIA operative from the Astana mission. Immediately after that, it becomes apparent that _absolutely_ everyone in the Situation Room has more faith in her as a military strategist than they do in Wi - _the President._

Across the table from her, the National Security Adviser gives her a curt nod.

“Molly,” Mac greets her, watching Wi - _the President_  for the cue to sit. 

Pushing her blonde hair behind her ears, Molly shuffles through a sheaf of paper in a manila folder. “Glad to see you, Mac.”

“We all are,” the Chief of the Army adds in, a General Herb Wilson who she’s never met in person before, but has traversed in the same professional circle for years. 

Swallowing hard, she nods. “Thank you, General.” 

“Ms. McHale. Welcome.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. All Mac can do is nod appreciatively. 

Trying to access the room, her eyes scan over the assembled crowd. She looks at the President, waiting for him to say something, and realizes he’s waiting for her take charge in here like she did up in the Oval when the first report of a missile strike came through twenty minutes ago and Will asked her if she was willing to start work two weeks early.

_ I serve at the pleasure of the President.  _

He nods at her, leaning his forearms onto the table.

“Alright Molly, what’s the chatter coming in?” she asks, slipping into a calm mask like water. 


	7. Chapter 7

Only she would catch pneumonia in August. Not literally only _she,_ but only she has what feels like several pounds of scar tissue in her lungs. But probably literally only she would pass out in the Oval Office, in front of the President, at the tail-end of a coughing fit. Probably. She’s sure Sloan can do the legwork on checking that statistic out for her.

“I really don’t need the President of the United States tucking me into bed and reading me a bedtime story,” she complains, fussing with the oxygen canula at her nose.

The President looks down at her, distinctly unimpressed. “Your lips are blue. I had to catch you before you cracked your head open on my desk. Why in the _fuck_ did you not warn me that this was a possibility?”

“Because you’d have fired me for not being physically able to do the job,” she mumbles, voice rasping. She looks defiantly down at the duvet – it’s not the wrong answer, and they both know it. Two years ago he was looking for any reason to quietly dismiss her without causing a stir with women’s groups.

“I would have looked out for you, Mac, Jesus!” he almost shouts, but catches himself. For a few seconds, the only sound in the Lincoln bedroom is the soft noise of the oxygen tank the White House physician brought up for her. Will cups her elbow, looking at her intensely. She wants to shrink, but refuses to. “How petty do you think I am? It’s a miracle this hasn’t happened before now.”

Its two hundred yards from the Oval to the mansion. When you can’t breathe it feels like more; Jim offered her his arm first but Will refused to back down, and all but carried her up to the second floor of the Residence to meet the physician. Who promptly listened to her chest with his stethoscope and called down for an oxygen tank and mask to be brought up, and told the President that she’d probably need an IV and a chest drain.

At which point the President called the Surgeon General and demanded someone figure out how to treat her here instead of Walter Reed, so she could “be comfortable.”

Mostly Mac is wondering when Jim told Will about her slight phobia of hospitals.

“Where are you going?” she asks when he pushes himself off the mattress to stand.

“I’m getting you something to sleep in that isn’t lined with gabardine and isn’t a silk blouse,” he tells her in an offhand manner. “The doctor from Bethesda will be here soon to check you out, just… don’t go anywhere. If you move I’ll have you arrested.”

“Lonny likes me better than you,” she retorts, looking at the agent in question where he’s poised in the doorway, speaking with someone outside of her line of sight.

Will, very gently, pushes her back against the pillows. Which she appreciates, if she’s being wholly honest. Her chest hurts. So does her head. And rationally she knows she should stop fighting but the past five years or so have been a practicum in fighting ‘em until she can’t, and it’s a horrid habit to break.

“Lonny, like me, wants you alive.”

“The President’s right,” Lonny answers, leaning back into the room. “I don’t think I’d survive it here without you keeping him in line. So take it easy, would you? Jenna brought you some PJs.”

He takes a few steps into the Lincoln bedroom, folded clothes clasped in one hand. Mac creases her eyebrows together, thinking that there is no possible way that Jenna could have sent someone to her apartment and back in this amount of time. That is, the clothes must be Will’s.

Mac wonders what sorts of conversations the President is having with his personal aide.

Wi – the President pouts, taking the clothes. “I wanted to do that.”

“Well you prioritized arguing with a sick woman over finding her clothes to sleep in, Mr. President,” Lonny retorts with a shrug. “That’s not my fault.”

The President tosses the clothes into her lap, mumbling something about giving her the privacy to change, offering to get Jenna or Maggie or Jim if she needs help or he could – he shakes his head, and leaves.

(When he comes back, she’s wearing a University of Nebraska sweatshirt and cotton shorts, and he’s bearing the top Bethesda thoracic surgeon, and holds her hand as the chest drain is put in.)


	8. Chapter 8

They haven’t made it all the way through a White House function in months, ever since relations with Russia have gotten heated again less than a _year_ after they’ve finally gotten Kazakhstan to cool down. Situation Room officials have gotten rather used to Mac making her appearance in a couture gown decent by the grace of double-sided tape and, well, a tuxedo has never made anyone doubt someone’s credentials, so she figures what the President is wearing is significantly less important.

(Not entirely unimportant though. She’s always been fond of Will McAvoy in tuxedo.)

His niece is enjoying it, though, as whenever they get called away she’s relieved from being the acting First Lady and can flirt with the progeny of whichever Ambassador she sees fit without having the person in command of the 101st Airborne breathing down her neck.

(Not that Will would ever admit to his over-protectiveness.)

“I said you look good!”

Sighing, she grips the flounces of her red Elie Saab as they hasten from the East Room back to the West Wing. “You said I look like Helen of Troy.”

(More specifically, he less-than-surreptitiously looked at her plunging neckline, turned red when he caught her noticing, and muttered something about golden apples and the Judgment of the Russian President.

At first he thought she hadn’t heard. But, of course, his Chief of Staff hears _everything_ that goes on in Washington.)

“In that dress?” he says, trying to make what he thinks is a casual gesture to her stunning figure. “I’d go to war over, well, your face isn’t too bad, but in that dress I’d _walk_ to the Hill for a declaration over other bits of your anatomy, too.”

_ “Mr. President.” _

Since he broke up with the First Lady of the Gun Lobby Nina Howard, the tabloids after been after the two of them enough without one of the press gang overhearing him making comments like that. Not that they were, or are, but worrying about the press keeps her from getting flustered or even worse, _hopeful._

Not that it stops the President from continuing, as they round into the West Wing lobby and towards the stairs to the basement which, for some reason, do not have railings. But Will is well-trained by this point.

“I mean, we’re already in a jam with Russia and the Chinese, maybe we’ll just show them you in this dress and see what happens,” he says, eyeing Mac’s face for a response–a flat affect, completely unimpressed, but he continues on undeterred. She hoists up her skirt away from her legs and he offers her his arm, still impressed with how deftly she can manage the uneven stairs in sky-high Louboutins even without his help. “But that’s why _you_ generally advise _me_ on military affairs.”

(He could get away with not offering her his arm, but there are good reasons for him to do it. First of which being his mother raised him correctly, second being as the President of the United States he likes to tell himself that he is also a _moral_ leader and moral men don’t let ladies maneuver down lopsided steps in stilettos unassisted, and third being it’s the only way he can get away with being in physical contact with Mac.

Well, not the only way. But the etiquette secretary or whoever the hell manages stuck-up rules in the White House frowns in a disquieting way whenever he asks Mac to dance more than twice during State Dinners.)

Mac sighs, and would be pinching the bridge of her nose if her hands were not engaged on her President’s arm and keeping the yards of red beaded silk from under her heels. “The years I spent with NATO and the UN abroad versus your decades on a farm in the middle of corn country–”

“Hey, boundary disputes in the _cornhusker_ state can get nasty. Complete Hatfield and McCoy level shit.” Now he’s enjoying himself, grinning in a small way even as they’re about to be updated on the positions of Russian forces in Kundu. “And then the four years on the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee, and two as the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee and–”

“Yes sir,” she interrupts, letting go of his arm. “Before you prattle off your CV again in its entirety, sir.”

Will snorts, waving off the Sit Room guards standing at attention as he walks by them.

“Who made your dress, again?”

MacKenzie really is quite beautiful in this one in particular, making him forget all his closely-held reasons why he won’t forgive her.

It’s good that Charlie’s out tonight padding the coffers from the re-election fund, because otherwise he’d be dragged into another strategy meeting with his Very Special Advisor that would primarily involve a large amount of bourbon and an insubordinate amount of prodding into his love life and an unpresidential amount of scowling from himself.

“You can ask Tess, she was the one who answered all the sartorial questions the press had,” Mac answers plainly, fitting her hand over the sensor, typing in the code word level clearance. “Why?”

“I want to write the designer a thank you.”

The door opens, and he lets her step through first, but not before she turns her perfectly-coiffed head back in his direction and murmurs, “You do understand that we’re walking into the Situation Room now, right sir?”

He smiles.

“Yes ma’am.”

She frowns. “Mr. President.”

Immediately the military and NSA types swarming the large table stand, and their attentions are captured by the haggard looking Deputy NSA Jerry Dantana, and the pictures he’s clutching to his chest. _Operation Genoa,_ Mac thinks, feeling her shoulders sag as the room choruses “Mr. President,” and, like always, Will somewhat uncomfortably waves them off.

(But that’s why she’s there, after all. Despite his years in the Senate he’s never spent a day in uniform and while she hasn’t either, he let her stay because having a Chief of Staff who is a former NATO delegate and Santos intelligence expert – and it wasn’t until he could read Mac’s FBI file that he learned about the classified work she did for Nancy McNally under Bartlet before that but regardless – is compensation enough.

President Will McAvoy is all blonde hair and heartland. MacKenzie McHale’s barely ever spent three consecutive years in the same country.)

By the time they can return to the party Jerry’s spent too much time pitching the Op to her and the Russians have entered what is definitely not their own territory as negotiated by the 2011 treaty but also not close enough to the US bases in Kundu for them to actually do anything about it.

It’s also past midnight.

And his niece is absent, and so is the frowny etiquette person, which is how Will decides it’s a good idea to ask Mac for another dance when the orchestra begins a slow waltz.

“Maria isn’t here, I don’t think you have anything to fear,” she whispers, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge how routine it’s become for his hand to be on her waist, even if their bodies remain a respectable distance away.

Will is just glad for the distance. Mac is literally the only reason the state of their foreign affairs is what it is and he’d hate for her to be the reason he’s caused a diplomatic fuck-up by how his body tends to react to her closeness.

Especially in the goddamn red dress.

Fucking formalwear.

A sentiment Mac would echo, looking at the man she forcibly reminds herself is her _President_ in his four thousand dollar Armani tuxedo (a gift from Speaker Lansing) and the words _Not Allowed Anymore_ pound through her head.

But it’s midnight.

So while neither of them would admit it, they let themselves get pulled in a little bit closer.


	9. Chapter 9

The images rattle around in his brain, images that blood-splattered and bruise-tinted: espionage, kidnapping, torture. And after three and a half weeks, escape from the shuttered basement room where she was being held by a cache of Russian operatives who were spending their time unceremoniously trying out new _enhanced interrogation techniques_ on her. 

And then on the next page, squared around two blocks of redacted text, the implication that MacKenzie was ordered to get herself kidnapped in the first place, to conduct counterintelligence. 

Will distinctly feels like he’s going to be sick all over the presidential seal on his carpet. This is what she spent three years doing for Matt Santos in the East. 

Hands shaking for a cigarette, he flips through to the next page of the file, revealing a Walter Reed medical report. 

“Fuck.”

Cracked ribs, concussion, broken fingers. Lost toenails, hairline skull fracture, pneumonia. Chest drains, internal bleeding, tachycardia.  _Post-traumatic stress._

Swallowing down the sharp taste of bile, Will closes MacKenzie’s CIA file with a decided _thwap._ He can’t continue. It matters, he knows it matters, but he can’t spectate what _happened_ to her like this. It takes a fleeting bolt of bravery (muddled by a pang of agony) to drag him to his feet. 

She said she would be in her office when he finished, to answer any questions he may have. Her lips had moved slowly, her voice deadened, eyes blank. Will knew then that she never wanted anyone to know. Failing that, never wanted anyone to know but those who were read in by the NSA - Charlie - those who were there for it in the first place - Jim. 

But now they’re at war again, and President Chigorin has threatened her. 

Slowly, he walks out from behind the Resolute desk and towards the door linking Mac’s office to the Oval, scripting what he is going to say to her in his head. But the only thoughts dredging up are inappropriate: _I will destroy him over this, How are you still standing?, I’m so sorry, I will make that tightass pay for taking pleasure in this, I love you, please stay, I bought into Operation Genoa too._

He arrives at her doorway, still unsure of what to say.

Swallowing uneasily, he pushes open the door - and finds Mac slumped over her desk, limbs sprawled awkwardly, and somehow asleep. For what he thinks is the first time in days. 

For a long moment, he just _watches_  her. Her skin is pale, almost grey. Her hair needs to be washed, her clothes changed. Even in sleep, her brows are knitted together, her face lined with anxiety. The delicate skin under her eyes is red and swollen. 

Will sighs. 

Gently, he manages to wrap one of her arms over his shoulder, and lifts her out from her chair. Flickering his eyes towards the ceiling, he prays that she won’t wake. 

MacKenzie stirs.

“What are you doing?” she mumbles, groggy, and tightening her arm around his neck. “Will–” 

He elects to ignore the fact that she hasn’t called him by his name in three years. 

“Shh…”

It looks like she’s going to fight him, or at least provide him with a snarky brush-off and curt _Mr. President,_ but she must be truly exhausted. Her eyelids defeat her, dragging themselves closed in the next moment. 

Ignoring the curious looks of the Secret Service, he carries her the two hundred yards to the Residence, depositing her into the soft bed in the Lincoln Bedroom. Cringing, he tries to remove her shoes and jacket without jostling her. With only a bare, desolate second of hesitation, he brushes her bangs off her forehead, and then silently leaves her to slumber. 


	10. Chapter 10

She’s much warmer than she should be – that’s the first thought drudged out of her morning-thick brain. Too warm, before happening upon the realization that her face is pressed into something that is breathing and solid.

It’s Will’s heart she can hear beating in front of the spine her cheek is pushed up against. Nerves quickened, she accidentally tightens her arm around his waist, cursing silently. _Fuck._

The President and his Chief of Staff. 

And then MacKenzie remembers she has no idea how she got her, to this bed. _In the Lincoln Bedroom,_ she corrects herself, opening her eyes. Last she remembers, she was sitting at her desk at four in the morning, waiting for Will (it’s too early, too late, to correct herself now) to finish reading her CIA file. 

So now it is morning.

And he has read it.

Apparently the result of which is them in bed together. Squirming slightly, feeling her body down to her well-worn panty hose clinging to the dry skin of her legs, she notes that all has been removed is her shoes and her jacket, which she spots across the room neatly placed on a chair. Carefully, she extracts herself out from around Will and rolls onto her back to stare up at the high, arched ceiling. 

Breathing slowly through pursed lips, she fights the rising tide of anxiety. Fights, and loses, the sound of her pulse in her ears like crashing waves. Her fingers and feet begin to tingle, a weight appearing on her chest. 

Will read her file, and hasn’t fired her. He’s carried her to bed. Fallen asleep beside her. 

They are so fucked. 

“Oh Billy,” she sighs, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. 


	11. Chapter 11

This isn’t the place for this conversation. They shouldn’t be in the stairwell outside the Situation Room having this conversation. MacKenzie doesn’t really know where they should be having this conversation, because it doesn’t belong in the Oval or the Roosevelt Room or her own office -- probably the Residence, she thinks, but she’s pretty damn sure now that she doesn’t belong there either.

After all, she’s fired at the end of this party.

These are her last few hours in professional politics.

“Are you sure you didn’t tell me ‘cause you wanted to break up?” he asks, leaning against the wall as if this was some cool, casual conversation that four Secret Service agents weren’t desperately trying to not overhear. “Make your next big career move at the DoD?”

Mac folds her arms under her chest, anger coiling tightly in her stomach and all of a sudden she’s reminded of email after email after goddamn email. “Okay, you know what, Will -- _fuck you_.”

The President’s mouth drops open, and she could laugh. She just told him to go fuck himself. She wonders when the last time was that anyone dared to say that to him, let alone use his name. Years, she bets. The President prides himself on being unreachable on his particular tract of moral high ground.

“It’s a reasonable--”

“Why would I have broken up with you?” she asks, trying to be less angry than she is, but failing. At least she looks good, she supposes. Green Elie Saab gown, hair done, make up done. If only it wasn’t apparent within five seconds of looking at her that she hasn’t slept in two months. “I was in love with you. Are you sure you’re not just a massive bag of douche?”

Her career and personal life are exploding in a spectacular fashion, but at least she looks good.

The President barely looks fazed by this turn of events, but she credits that to the fact that he told her a few hours ago it was no longer his pleasure for her to serve as his Chief of Staff. He looks good, mostly. He’s always looked good in a tux.

Mildly angry, and in a tux.

“Cause let me tell you something,” she continues. “It’s just plain weird that you were prepared to marry me, that you’d bought a ring, but were unwilling to read any of my emails or give me _any_ benefit of the doubt. Really, Mr. President? Next big career move – getting tortured by the Russians?”

Something in his face indicates to her that he would really like to get out of this stairwell.

“Yeah, I’m sorry for this, but the ring was a practical joke.”

And just like that, her heart breaks. (This time, at least, it’s not entirely her own fault.)


	12. Chapter 12

“Has anyone seen Mac?”

“I’m right here.” Where she has been the past ten minutes, scratching into a cocktail napkin a potential press release for her departure from the White House. Somehow, somehow, she and Will have managed to top the clusterfuck that was the 2010 New Year’s Eve party. At least this time no one will have pictures of the President getting a drink thrown in his face at midnight, and Wade Campbell is long gone from the Beltway.

He looks at her breathlessly. “I – oh.”

“And stop yelling,” she mutters.

Scrunching up her face she shakes her head, depositing the napkin in a half-empty flute of champagne, watching until the words _MacKenzie McHale has stepped down as White House Chief of Staff, effective immediately as per the wishes of President William McAvoy_ – dissolve into bubbles.

Leaning down, he grabs her arm and urges her up from her table at the edge of the dance floor. “Could you come here – away from the party, for a moment?”

“Mr. President, it’s less than ten minutes to midnight. You really can’t disappear now,” she says, staring at his hand on her arm. “Whatever bombshell you need to drop on me can wait that long, I’m sure.”

The temptation to slip into the bathroom to fix her hair while trying to not burst into tears (again) is strong. Hide in the bathroom, attempt to put some life back into her face, wait until after midnight strikes and everyone finishes kissing and being happy and then say goodbye to the staff.

“Don’t go,” Will says, voice strained.

“Okay…”

“Why don’t we just…” Exasperated, she thinks, he looks around for an excuse before putting his hand on the small of her back. “You can’t tell me no if I ask you for a dance, right? I’m the President of the United States, I can give you an executive order to dance with me…”

“I don’t think that’s exactly how it works,” she mumbles, staring up at him.

His fingers draw up over the detailed beading covered her back as he steers her through the pairs crowding the dance floor until they are solidly in the center of the pack. “You can’t run away if you’re in the middle of all of this with me.”

The band is playing a song that she doesn’t recognize, but it’s slow, easy to waltz to, and Will pulls her into his arms. He picks up the rhythm easily, and she follows his lead – dancing has always been something he was good at, something he’s made her good at.

“I’m not Cinderella, I’m not fleeing at midnight and leaving you with naught but a glass slipper,” she says, careful to keep her voice low.

He looks at her with an inscrutable expression. “You sort of are.”

Exhaustion takes her over again, warm and nerve-deafening. One more fight with him tonight might actually kill her.

“Jesus, Will.” Mac tenses in his arms, and misses a step.

He easily compensates for it.

“There you go again,” he mutters under his breath, pulling her closer, holding her more tightly.

“Sorry, Mr. President.”

She wonders briefly if he thinks of her as an escaping animal, wonders what the excuse is going to be this time, because she’s tired of making them for him. The ring was a practical joke, and then a rejoinder – it has to have taken on some new life now for him to be holding her hostage like this, but she’s almost certain that she doesn’t want to hear about it. 

What’s done is done, on both their sides. She understands that now, and she is so very tired.

“That’s not how I – don’t apologize,” he stammers, and Mac tries to pull away. “Come here. Please.”

Her body returns to his with a sigh. It’s likely that she should savor this – she’ll be packing up her office when it ends. It’s almost painless to think about that with Will solid and surrounding her. With one of his hands at her waist, the other holding her own tightly. She longs to rest her head on his shoulder, let the loose silk skirt of her gown swirl at their feet and obscure his legs.

Will in a tux. She’s always liked him in formal wear.

Closing her eyes, she settles for stepping close enough for his arm to wrap almost all the way around her, and turns her head until they’re almost cheek-to-cheek. She exhales. Breathes him in, aftershave and dry-cleaning soap and sweat. Exhales again.

“I started writing a press release, about me leaving the administration,” she says very softly, her lips almost at his ear. “If you can scrounge up a deputy press secretary who isn’t too hungover, I’d slip it in during the first briefing. It’ll give Don and Elliot time to spin.”

His fingers tighten into her side, squeezing and releasing. “You don’t need to do that.”

“Do what?”

When he answers, his voice is low, and urgent again. “Write a press release about the fact that you’re – Mac you don’t need to do this for me.”

Pursing her lips together, Mac holds back a sigh, closing her eyes so tightly that lights erupt on the backsides of her eyelids.

“What did you need me for, Mr. President?” she asks, attempting to sound less tense than she is. Which is probably rather foolish, since she knows he can feel her tensing in his arms.

“I can’t tell you here,” he explains, swallowing uncomfortably.

“Is it about Kazakhstan?” she asks, trying to think about what he might need. “Did we get confirmation about the missile silos?”

“No,” he answers quickly, squeezing her fingers too tightly, until her own clench into his dress shirt – the overall effect of which is that they are pulled together, front to front. But tonight there are no worries about the etiquette secretary rushing over to pull him away at the end of their dance. Because even if she tries… there’s not much left to be done to tear them apart that they haven’t already done themselves.

MacKenzie can feel his heart heaving in his chest. She knows must be able to feels hers as well.

“It’s not that,” he mutters, absently nuzzling her cheek.

And with that, the song ends. Almost by habit, she tries to step away from him. But Will doesn’t let her; both of his hands land on waist, the wide span of his fingers covering her back. Its then that Mac realizes how dim the room has become, how drowsy.

“Stay,” he says, looking down at her.

The air turns thick and syrupy; she doesn’t want to look away. The band starts up again, the female singer stepping back up to the microphone. _Come Away With Me,_ MacKenzie recognizes, and stops until she and Will are merely swaying.

“What?”

“It’s almost midnight,” he tells her earnestly. “Just stay.”

So she does. She’ll stay, for the rest of this dance. And then she’ll go away from the party with the President, and then she’ll start packing up her office for the morning. But for now, it’s just her, Will, and the clock ticking down to midnight.

It comes more quickly than she expects, the band ceasing to play as the energy in the room rises until it becomes something tangible, something palpable. The MC takes over the microphone, and the projection of Times Square on the wall behind the stage is made brighter. Mac holds her breath as the partygoers and staff start counting down from sixty. By the time they make it to ten, her head feels like it’s filled with cotton.

_Five, four, three, two—_

As the cheers rise up with the opening strains of _Auld Lang Syne_ , Will turns his head towards hers.

Then he kisses her, his hands sliding up her back, into her hair, and to her waist again. It’s gentle, his lips barely a breath against hers. And before any of the other revelers can remove themselves from their own midnight kisses to pay any attention at all to their President and his Chief of Staff, he pulls back.

“What in the fuck is happening right now?” she asks, eyes going wide.

Will swallows hard, and takes her hand.

“Come to the Oval with me.”

Her head still filled with cottony clouds, she goes with him. A thousand questions flood her mind, each overlapping the other until she can’t string together enough words to ask any of them. She doesn’t, until Will tells the Secret Service trailing behind him five feet as always to seal the premises, the door to the Oval Office clicks closed behind them.

“What is it?” she asks, feeling alarm creeping up from her belly to her throat.

He rounds past her, towards the middle of the Oval, and then past the chairs and couches in the middle towards his desk. “I, uh – okay I actually had what I was going to say planned out in my head from when we were dancing but now it’s sort of just… gone.”

“What?” Eyebrows furred, she trails after him.

“Okay, so I’m just going to say it.” Licking his lips, he takes her hands, pulling her closer. Then seemingly remembers something else, and shoves a hand into the pocket of his tuxedo trousers, pulling out a box that is all too familiar. “I didn’t return it… because I’m in love with you, and because of um—”

“Excuse me?”

She can feel her eyes going comically wide.

“Will you marry me?” Will asks, looking entirely too afraid, but also incredibly determined.

“Wait.”

 _What in the ever-loving fuck is happening?_ Her eyes return to the ring, now held between the two of them. This is almost a scene out of a dream – her a beautiful gown, Will in a tux, a large diamond in a platinum setting. But all the small bits are wrong. All the fights they’ve had tonight, the war they’re falling into with Russia, his unfavorable ratings. But the ring is here. Even if she has no idea what to make of it now.

_It was a rejoinder._

“I said ‘will you marry me?’ and, before that, I said ‘I’m in love with you.’ That’s – that’s – that’s what I’m getting at,” Will continues rambling, now turning truly desperate. But her mind refuses to reconcile what is apparently happening in front of her with reality. “That’s what I – I feel like I could do this so much better if I could start this over—”

He pauses, licking his lips again. And then gets down on one knee in front of her – and then Mac has no idea what her face is doing at all, because Will is kneeling on the seal of the office of the President with a Tiffany ring in his hand.

“What are you doing?”

Because these things really do not happen to her.

Will takes one of her hands in his. “I – I – I don’t ever want to not be – no. I love you; I’m gonna go back to that, and, will you marry me? And let me just say, I really think you should, I think you should say yes, but, no matter what you say, there’s no chance I’m ever going to hurt you again. And no matter what you say, I’m gonna be in love with you for the rest of my life, there’s no way out of that, that’s just a… physical law of the universe; you own me. No matter what you say—”

These things don’t happen to MacKenzie McHale, but this is happening. In a moment as quick as when she decided to hold up a sign at a rally at Northwestern, she decides to take Will on faith again.

“Yes,” she manages to get out, steeling herself.

Will keeps going, trying his best to reassure her. “I will never stop—”

“Yes,” she says, more loudly. “ _I’m saying yes._ ”

Disbelief shuddering his features, his speech comes to a sudden halt as what she’s said must finally register. On his knee, he jerks forwards towards her. (Oddly enough, she’s reminded of their height difference. Or perhaps, just the length in his torso. Kneeling, he is not much shorter than he is.) Barely standing, Mac sways on her heels and tries to balance herself on his hand grasping hers.

“You’re saying yes?” he asks, blinking rapidly.

Laughing, she wants to shake her head at him if only it wouldn’t give the opposite message than the one she wants to impart. “Yes!”

Stunned, he exhales sharply. “Thank god.”

Staggering to his feet, he wraps his arms around her, and crashes their mouths together.


	13. Chapter 13

This is not what she expected to happen when Will told the Secret Service to seal the Oval and let no one in or out until he said so. MacKenzie isn’t sure what she _did_ expect to happen, after their fight in a cleared-out Situation Room hours earlier. Their fight in her office before that.

( _I serve at the pleasure of the President_ , she said. _I can’t leave unless you tell me to go. This is how it works at the White House. You have to fire me. What are you afraid of? So Chigorin leaked my file. I’m no damn hero. Stop being a coward and fire me._

He stared at her, eyes barren and desolate. _You no longer serve this administration. Don’t tell anyone until the morning staff meeting._

She nodded. _I won’t spoil the party. The staff should at least be able to feel… hopeful. For a few hours._ ) 

New Years’ has never held any magic for her; no miracle switch has ever been flipped, no midnight has ever held any auspicious luck or euphoria. It’s always been that one year has ended and the next ushered in, usually with a large amount of alcohol. The past few years: in the East Room, in a couture gown, with the boys on staff jockeying to kiss her chastely at midnight. 

Will fumbles the ring onto her finger, murmuring more apologies. Then, without warning, hoists her up onto the Resolute desk and Mac finds herself very grateful that the Elie Saab gown she selected for the evening has a skirt the shape that it is. When he pushes his tongue into her mouth, his hands skating up the glittering green beads sown to the bodice of her dress, she finds herself very grateful that it’s past midnight that no one will notice if the President doesn’t put in another appearance at the party. 

When she pulls their hips together, she finds herself very grateful that the Residence is only two hundred yards away.

If any member of the Secret Service smirks at them on their way… well, she honestly doesn’t give a fuck anymore. They’ve all known for years that President and Chief of Staff have a weakness for the other in formalwear.

(Lonny smiles at her in passing – she grins widely back.) 


	14. Chapter 14

They somehow (it’s the Secret Service, not somehow, he knows that but _still_ ) manage to avoid the other revelers, sneaking up the small staircase in the pantry off the small dining room. His hand stays on her back as he helps her up the narrow stairs, the sheer emerald silk of her skirt dancing around her feet.

“Don’t trip.”

“I’ll kick you in the face before I trip,” she says, and then looks behind her and down at him. “Are you staring at my ass?”

He smirks up at her. “It’s not your ass that that dress puts on display.”

Truly, he has no idea how Mac selects what gowns to wear to which function, or if she owns them or just rents them or maybe borrows them from couture-political connections she’s cultivated over the years and therefore does not have much of a choice as to what goes _on display_ any particular night. And not that he is in any way complaining about the deep v-shaped neckline of her gown tonight. He loves when Mac has occasion to be all dressed up – they first met at the 2004 USO gala, and she was in tight-fitting teal lace gown with barely-there back that kept his attention all evening once they had been introduced.

(Or rather, after he answered her nonverbal request for aide in escaping a conversation with the preternaturally creepy Senator Robert Royce, sweeping her away from the bar and onto the dance floor. _Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m sorry about my colleague. I’m—_

_I know who you are, Senator._

_Will is fine,_ he said, trying to find a reason to get her to like him. He doesn’t remember if he had a solid reason why, beyond the fact that he’d shown up alone and that she was, and still is, the most attractive woman he’s seen in real life. _Friends call me Will, and considering Robby thinks we’re friends now, don’t you think we should act the part? At least for the rest of the dance, I mean. And maybe for a drink, after that. Unless you’re here with someone—_

 _Nancy McNally was kind enough to make my attendance tonight mandatory,_ she answered. _I’m just here with coworkers. I’m MacKenzie McHale, Dr. McNally’s new senior aide. And thank you, for the rescuing. Very deft._ )

“Well, that _is_ what the double-sided tape is supposed to help with.” Dipping slightly, she grabs his hand off her waist and twines their fingers together.

“What?”

He really has no idea what she’s referring to.

“I stole it off Maggie’s desk before I changed,” she continues, looking at him like he should be understanding the implication.

He understands what she means in the middle of the hallway, but has the presence of mind not to say anything until the door to the master suite is closed behind them, half a dozen or so agents sealing them in. Mac is unaware of this revelation, sighing as she stares into the bedroom, rolling her neck as she tries to get her shoulders to loosen.

Walking until he’s pressed up behind her, he closes his hands in around her waist again.

“Wait, you’re not wearing a bra?”

“You’ve been staring there all night and you really have to ask?” Turning her head, she arches back against him, pushing her breasts out. He considers remarking on the fact that the only time she _caught_ him staring it was because he was stunned stupid by her appearance when she first walked into the Oval in the dress to fetch him for the party. “You just haven’t been paying attention, Will.”

Several responses jockey for position at the front of his mouth, like _I’ve had other things on my mind_ and _a gentleman never presumes,_ something to fit with their usual conversational dissonance, to supply snark and heavy-handed levity. But his mind latches onto something else entirely. Something he hasn’t heard from her, let alone much of anyone, in the past six years.

“Say it again,” he murmurs in her ear, flattening his hands over her stomach, sliding them up over her beaded bodice to touch the bottom of her breasts.

“Say what again?” She shivers.

His hands tease up even further, his thumbs seeking out her nipples through fabric. Feeling them harden and bud, he circles them tightly, until he hears her sigh.

“My _name_.”

Open-mouthed, he leaves a kiss under her earlobe, and then licks a stripe of sensitive skin on her neck.

Mackenzie squirms, pushing her ass back into his lap. “Will…”

Years of silent longing burn under his skin. Ever since returning to the White House, Mac has been a strict supplicant to protocol – until Genoa. Then touch returned, embraces and soft slight caresses. The night he fell asleep beside her. And then she fell sick, to the cusp of hospitalization, in the mansion. Holding her hand as the surgeon put in the chest drain, dabbing at her forehead with a cold cloth. But still until tonight, she hasn’t called him by his _name._

And until tonight, that’s the way he’s had himself convinced that he wanted it.

That allowing her the liberty of using his given name would undo him.

He wasn’t wrong.

She says it again, on a long soft exhale. Contented for the moment, but still wanting. Lips still pressed against her neck, he cups her breasts and squeezes them gently before removing one of his hands to sweep her curled ponytail off her neck.

He buries his nose in her nape, inhaling the tang of hairspray and sweat and perfume. His hand sweeps down from her neck to the zipper of her dress, slowly drawing it down. Parting the halves, he slips one hand inside, and then the other. Feels his way over her bare stomach and the swell of her hips, back up to her waist again. Over precise surgical scars that are slight rises of tissue under his fingertips, taking the time to set them to memory before traversing his hands upwards again. Finding the double-sided tape he breaks the seal between flesh and silk, palming her breasts and pushing them together.

“Will, we should go to bed.” She gasps, trying to shrug her gown off her shoulders.

He tastes some of the sweat on her neck. “We’ll end up there.”

Her bodice falls open, scrunching down to her hips in mass of heavy beads and sequins. For so long now he’s spent evenings imagining what it would be like to peel one of these gowns off of her – he has a mindful of fantasies he’d like to empty out into reality as much as possible.

His touch moves downward again, to the top of her lace panties.

Mac grinds back against him; his erection pulses against the swell of her ass. “Maybe _before_ a nuclear power decides to do something that requires our attention elsewhere. Because I don’t know about you, but I think my focus is no longer salvageable.”

“That was my goal.” He starts walking her towards the bad. “That, and make this dress of yours unsalvageable.”

Balking, she turns on her heel, her hands landing on his chest. “This was given to me on loan, you’d better not—“

“I will buy it, in full.”

With that he tips her back onto the bed, watching as her breasts heave as she settles against the duvet. Her face and chest are flushed, her eyes wide and bright, lips pink and swollen – she looks more alive than she has in months. And God, so beautiful.

His eyes track to the ring sparkling on her finger.

Alive, beautiful, and going to be his wife.

“Will? You’re staring.”

Absently, he licks his lips, removing his jacket from his shoulders and letting it drop carelessly to the floor.

“Come here,” Mac murmurs, reaching for him.

Leaning up, her fingers clench into his shirt, pulling him down on top of her. He lands with a groan, riding his hips against hers. Too many layers between them, but _fuck_ does he want her. Her mouth finds his, her tongue slipping into his mouth as her fingers nimbly pluck apart his bowtie, next finding the top buttons of his shirt.

As much as he wants to feel her breasts pushed into his chest, he knows he’d much rather—

When he pulls their mouths apart she whimpers, and tries to hold onto his shoulders as he sinks down the length of her body. Her breasts are a momentary (or longer than that, which he’ll eagerly admit) distraction, before he lowers himself down to the floor, onto his knees.

Then, with his hands getting as much of her legs under them as possible, he looks up at her over the plane of her body as he pushes up her skirts and pulls down her underwear.

His heart pounding in his chest with anticipation, he mouths the delicate skin on the insides of her thighs. The smell of her is intoxicating, her folds red and wet and swollen – unable to restrain himself, he seeks out her clit with his thumb. Unerringly so, her hips torqueing up off the mattress.

“God, Will.”

Giggling, she leans up onto one elbow, looking down at him over the plane of her abdomen.

Then any laughter on her face dies, a familiar expression of lust gripping her features. And for fuck’s sake has he missed _that._

Keeping her gaze, he bends to meet her wetness with his mouth.


	15. Chapter 15

“I can’t believe this is happening again.”

She’s wearing his sweatshirt again, and a pair of his boxers, and a surgeon from Walter Reed just put in a drain on both sides – mostly as a precaution, he said, not that it doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking hurt. Will could see how much it hurt from Mac’s face as the tubes went in even after a local anesthetic.

“The doctor said you’re at high risk for relapse,” he says, sweeping her hair out of her face, combing it away from her eyes again and again. “Because of the—”

“I know,” she mumbles, voice low. Her fingers clench in to the duvet, and then reach for him. She can’t move at all, and her hand lands blindly on his thigh. “I got my flu shot and everything. I’m going to fire whoever gave me this cold.”

(It was probably Neal, but he won’t mention that to her.)

He shifts on the bed, moving closer to her. It’s awkward like this; Mac is propped up at an incline and he’s trying to match it without falling on top of her or lying on any of the tubes and needles plugged into her. “Honey, everything was here already for this. We’ll formalize a protocol, or something. And I swear to God the next time you get so much as a case of the sniffles I’m locking you in a bubble.”

Her responding smile is weak, but she gives him one. “You can’t do that.”

“I know.” He takes a deep breath, wondering if he should turn the lights down for her. All they have on in the bedroom is one of the lamps on the nightstands, casting a yellowish glow through the bed curtains. “How much does it hurt right now?”

Her eyes dim, and he could kick himself.

(Fucking Russians.)

 “Can you stay until I fall asleep?” she asks, turning her head a bit to the side to look at him.

Softly, he kisses her cheek. “Of course.”

“I didn’t really mean what I meant, last time.” With a whistley exhale, she closes her eyes. “About you using this as an excuse to ask me to resign.”

“I know.”

“We don’t have to have a protocol,” she mumbles. No less awake, he knows, but at least starting to turn her mind off. She does this, and he forgot how much he missed it. He’d forgotten what it was like to be the receiver of Mac’s last waking thoughts, to listen to the dregs of important information she remembers to impart before giving up to slumber.

He strokes his hand through her hair again. “It’ll help me sleep better at night.”

“Okay.”


	16. Chapter 16

“You can’t do this,” he whines. Or would whine, if it was presidential to whine. “I get to hire the staff!”

“Technically as your Chief of Staff I do the hiring, and as the President, you sometimes get to do the firing.” MacKenzie folds her arms under her chest, tapping her foot impatiently. “Rebecca Halliday is the best damn government attorney from this side of the Missouri River.” 

“Flattery will get you _nowhere_ where she is involved.”

Scoffing, she holds her ground when he rounds out from behind the Resolute desk. “She turned down an offer at a billion dollar law firm when I asked her to be the new White House Counsel.”

“We don’t need counsel! I am the counsel!” Will splutters, leaning in closer to MacKenzie than most would consider strictly necessary. And it’s not like he _dislikes_ the outgoing House Majority Whip it’s just that… he and Becca historically dislike each other. Vehemently. And for entertainment. So it is best if their interactions are parceled out in small doses, reserved for bank holidays. 

It’s in the middle of this internal monologue that he realizes that the door between his and Mac’s office has been open the whole time, and that Becca is leaning in aforementioned doorway with a sharkish smile on her face.

“Pardon me, Mr. President, but facing down the menagerie of incompetence that is the US Congress is a little different than prosecuting an escort service in Greenpoint,” she says, smile growing. She’s clearly enjoying herself.

Will grumbles. “I put away bad guys, Halliday. I locked up mafia dons.”

Her response is a dignified lift of one eyebrow.

“So?” Mac asks, the expression on her face clearly daring him to tell her to revoke Rebecca’s security badge right now and _escort_ her out of the West Wing. 

But he just groans. If he doesn’t do this, someone will make his life hell. If not Rebecca herself, then Mac. Or Charlie. Or god forbid, Leona. 

“Her office better be the one farthest from the Oval,” he warns Mac before sweeping out of the office and into his secretary’s bullpen, yelling, “JENNA!” 


	17. Chapter 17

They’re in and out before the Arlington Circuit Court before business hours begin. Arlington, because Virginia is for lovers, requiring no twenty-four hour waiting period or blood test or Virginia residence. 

It does, however, require a nominal fee for the marriage license paid in cash that cannot even be waved for the President himself. And the President himself only ever carries credit cards and Mac’s white summer dress doesn’t have  _pockets,_ so the thirty dollar fee is paid – despite the efforts of the staff, Gary and Don and Neal in particular – by Charlie Skinner.

“Are you sure you want to marry this idiot?” he asks MacKenzie with a look of paternal solemnity on his face, cash in one hand and cradling hers in the other. 

(Jim is the one “giving her away” – if only because she’s letting him – so she figures she should let Charlie get his shots in too.) 

She considers it for a moment, gamely ignoring Will’s pout. “I’m sure.” 

The whole of the senior staff is there, in support of their 3 AM decision to be wed before going to the Hill to ask for a declaration of war; might as well be done with it now before Russia derails their plans for a June Rose Garden wedding, might as well just be safe about it, might as well be practical in case they need to just issue a press release that they were married in a small civil ceremony a month before the scheduled day. 

Might as well start the day that will irrevocably change their lives anyway with their wedding. 

Don videos the whole thing on his Blackberry, and Mac is thankful. Her body is humming with adrenaline, seconds and minutes blurring by as the Judge makes his way to pronouncing them husband and wife. She doesn’t know if she’ll remember a bit of this at all. 

“William McAvoy, will you have this woman to be your wedded wife, to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, forsaking all others, for so long as you both shall live?“ 

His thumb rubs over the hills and valleys of her knuckles, and he lifts her hand to kiss it. “I do.” 

She smiles, her eyes burning through tears. 

(Oh, she thinks, how life can turn on a dime. Oh – what she yet doesn’t know, what life is beginning to swell inside her, what blood will be spilled tonight.) 

“MacKenzie McHale, will you have this man to be your wedded husband, to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, forsaking all others, for so long as you both shall live?”

The urge to kiss him is strong, but she’s always been one for following the strict procession of things. 

“I do,” she murmurs. 

They’re married by the authority vested by the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and for a brief moment this bright spring morning, they kiss and let themselves forget the tumult to come. 

The staff cheers; joy reigns briefly in the hall of justice and the heroes win.

No one knows what is to come. 


	18. Chapter 18

_It was supposed to be good PR._ That’s what he thinks as his knees give out under the burning pain erupting in his sides.  _It was supposed to be good PR._ A town hall at George Washington University on the eve of a war with Russia, a night answering the concerns of the young adults who would be saddled with the long-lasting repercussions of this whole clusterfuck. 

Good PR. Good for the campaign. Good for  _goddamn students,_  Mac reminded him as she was prying him out of the Oval. Good, up until he was working the rope line and someone pulled a gun. 

He hadn’t really been paying attention, shaking hands with students and locals as Neal tried to persuade him of something or the other. 

It was Jim who spotted the gun.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget MacKenzie’s scream – but at least he got Neal out of the line of fire, at least no one else was walking right next to him, at least Mac and Jim and Charlie were five steps behind. But she screams, and it’s all he hears. 

Other people are screaming too, and Secret Service agents are shouting and more guns are going off, clips being emptied and reloaded but in the rush of sound, all hears is Mac. 

He realizes a moment later that she’s stopped, is hoisting him back to his feet with Lonny, is getting him to the limo. The screaming is in his head, some traumatic exhale of his conscious as the thought slowly settles into reality: he’s been shot. 

The tires of the limo screech, the vehicle barely stopping to let them in before lurching away from the sidewalk outside Lisner Auditorium – he lands on his back on the floor, and he blinks, dazed. Eyes on the ceiling, he feels someone taking his tie off, his jacket. 

“Mac–” 

“We’re less than half a mile from the hospital, Mrs. McAvoy,” Lonny assures Mac over his head, balling his own jacket in his hands to press into his side. “The President is gonna be fine.” 

Will opens his mouth to comment on how he and Bartlet are really pulling the Secret Service’s batting average down, but he finds that his mouth has filled with blood.

“Don’t talk, honey,” Mac chides him; he realizes then that his head landed in her lap. 

Her face is in shadows, but he can see a smear of blood down her front. Gasping for air, he reaches for her, trying to flex his numbed fingers towards her. Face creased with distress, she reaches for his hand and kisses his knuckles. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she murmurs; the blood is his. “Stay awake, Billy. Stay awake for me. I love you. God, please, just stay awake–” 

And he tries to answer, but the attempt has him heaving up blood. 

Mac cries out, looking at Lonny with tears in her eyes. 

“Less than a minute out.” 

They take an excruciating turn, tires squealing over the pavement; he nearly laughs. For all his father tried, he never managed to inflict this much pain. Will is entirely unprepared. His mind jars him back out of the situation, creating dissonance between the gaping hole in his side and the rest of his body. Black edges in at the corners of his vision. 

“Will, stay awake–” 

Struggling for breath, he focuses on Mac’s terrified face hovering a foot over his, her fingers combing through his hair. “Please,” she whispers, bending to brush her lips against his ear. “Please, just stay awake a little bit longer.” 

She married him this morning, so it’s probably the least he can do. 

(It’s not until the surgeon forces her to let go of his hand in the trauma room that his eyes at last fall closed.) 


	19. Chapter 19

They pick themselves up off the ground, the sound of gunshots reverberating through their heads, picking gravel out of their palms. And then when they are all upright and accounted for by the Secret Service, it begins.

“It’s not my blood!” Neal is yelling at a paramedic, trying to fight his way off a stretcher. “The President! The President’s been shot! Fucking Christ, I’m fine, you have to let me go -- Jim, come on, tell them--”

Jim is more preoccupied with Maggie’s lacerated scalp, and the shards of glass she won’t let him pull out of it. 

“Mac was able to go with him,” she says, blinking wildly, trying to use the cuff of her blouse to staunch the bleeding. 

Gary and Martin, shaken but otherwise unharmed, find them through the crowd. 

“What--” 

Mouth dry, Jim tries to swallow. “That’s because  _Mac_  threw an elbow at her Secret Service agent, vaulted over me, and got to the President before half of his own detail. Tess, Tamara, where are Don and Sloan?” 

Tamara shakes her head; Tess just stares at him blankly.

“I thought they were with you.” 

“The President!” Neal insists.

But none of it feels real. Not the sirens, not the screams and shouts, not the chaos in which they are nestled right in the middle of. The reality is that they just lived an assassination attempt -- or an assassination. The truth of that, for them, waits, prickling at the edges of their consciousness. 

Sloan enters with a shout. “They took him to GW!”

“That’s less than -- we can run that,” Maggie mumbles, snapping out of her fugue of shock. 

Don, breathless, stops beside her. “Yeah. Yeah we can. Did anybody -- is the President alive?” 

“I don’t fucking know, ask any of the five million people recording this on smartphones,” Jim says, trying to keep a hold of Maggie who now looks ready to bolt towards N and 34th. The world will be waking up to this; it took four minutes for the news outlets to break in when Bartlet was shot. This is an age with smartphones. He has no doubts that distorted cell phone footage of the shooting has already made into the hands of some hack CNN producer. “Who got put into the second limo? Charlie? Secretary McNally? Maggie--” 

She throws an elbow, pitching herself away from him and taking off at a sprint. Gary shrugs, and takes off after her. Then Sloan, and Don. Tess, Tamara, Martin. Jim, at the last, helps Neal away from the paramedics, and holds him upright against his side as they try to escape the churning crowd and towards the hospital.

_ Is the President alive?  _


	20. Chapter 20

Jenna sits at her desk in the small foyer to the Oval Office. Filing, but doing nothing really. Waiting for the President and the senior staff and speechwriters to come back from GWU. 

“He loves the people,” Kendra mutters. “I’m sure Mac is enthused her wedding night is being delayed by the rope line.” 

Jenna shrugs. “She’s a good sport. Usually. Sometimes.” 

The television screen across from them bursts into the  _BREAKING NEWS_ cut screen. Jenna drops the stack of reports she filing into her inbox, and looks at the screen while mild interest. 

A door bangs open down the hall. Elliot’s, she thinks. 

It makes sense when she turns her head back to the television, and reads the scroll on the bottom of the screen next to the CNN bug. 

“Kendra!” she shouts, scrambling to her feet. 


	21. Chapter 21

It takes longer to get through the Secret Service guarding the emergency room than it does to run three blocks uptown to get to the hospital in the first place and no one can tell them if the President is alive or not. 

“He’s being worked on,” is all that Lonny will tell them, once they pass into the innermost sanctum of agents. 

(JFK was worked on for almost an hour before the surgeons admitted that JFK had left most of his brain matter in the back of the convertible. It does not comfort any of them to have this knowledge.) 

They see Charlie first, with a crumpled piece of paper in his hands.

A few feet off is Mac, her cream-colored blouse a mess of blood. Her hands, also covered in red, twitch towards her face. There is a smear of blood on her cheekbone. Even though her face is deadened, eyes looking straight ahead and seeing nothing, and she holds herself tightly. Grimacing, she finally folds her arms under her chest, nodding to the staff.

“Charlie?” Sloan asks, nodding to the paper in his hand. 

He looks at Mac, who is drifting from them.

“The President is alive. They kicked us out so they could crack his chest, stop some of the bleeding before taking him up to surgery.” He presents the piece of paper, a memo, to Jim. “I’ve called the Cabinet, Speaker Lansing, and the Vice President. Mac is... she did her job.” 

The staff crowds around the memo, written in Mac’s handwriting. And then remember the two day, three day, four day stories after Bartlet was shot, the accusations of usurpation leveled at Leo McGarry and then even further back, the accusations against Edith Wilson and the undue influence of First Ladies in the White House. 

Jackie Kennedy, bolting out of a Dallas hospital.  _Let them see what they’ve done._

“We’re invoking the 25th amendment,” Charlie says. “Section Four. So just... prepare yourselves.” 


	22. Chapter 22

They’re going to leak it. Their wedding -- the stupid Rose Garden wedding that she didn’t let herself dream about and then  _did_  and her stupid white dress for her White House wedding -- is supposed to be the seventh of June but it’s not going to be now, so they might as well leak that they got married yesterday morning. 

MacKenzie keeps thinking about her wedding dress, wondering what will happen to it. What will happen to her. When she met Will all those years ago she told him that she doesn’t live or die on the Democratic party, but she thinks she might live here. Die here. 

The surgeon took Will off the ventilator. He’s breathing. His lungs collapsed, but he can breathe now. It’s good. 

(She could do something important like donate the dress to the Smithsonian or the national archives; every time she closes her eyes her exhausted mind keeps battering her with images of bloodstained silk, red-powdered lace. 

To match the clothes they cut off of Will hours earlier.)

Charlie told Don and Maggie and Elliot to leak their quickie Circuit Court wedding. In a few hours, the press will be referring her on the air and in column inches as the First Lady. 

_You’re a very smart woman and a credit to your profession and if you weren’t, for some reason, brain-damaged enough to marry me I’d probably be making you Director of the CIA._

She’s changed. Jenna brought her clothes. Lonny called her Mrs. McAvoy in the limo on the way to the hospital. She wonders if she’s going to have McHale taken away from her. Because Lonny is one thing, Lonny she knows and that’s fine and he meant it the right way, because her  _husband_ was bleeding to death in her lap. But young, blonde, and conservative on FOX news isn’t going to mean it that way. They’re going to use it to pry her out of the administration. They’re going to use it to hurt him. 

And someone’s already hurt him. 

The recovery room has been cordoned off for them. It’s just her, Will, and about twenty-five Secret Service agents. 

She squeezes his hand tightly.

MacKenzie, the Chief of Staff, has been working all night. Meeting with the Cabinet and the Vice President to invoke the 25th, working the Situation Room on the war with Russia, fielding calls from international leaders, meeting with party leadership and the Chairman of the Fed. 

Now she is staring at her pale and grey husband who is finally breathing off the ventilator. Swallowing past the painful lump in her throat, she leans up to comb his hair off his forehead, brushing her fingers over the stubble at his jawline. 

Vitals stable.

_He’s stable, Ms. McHale. Stable, but this is still serious._

Well yeah, she’d say a foot long incision on his right side is serious. The punctured lung and fluid in the pleural cavity. The bullet lodged next to his spine, the other in his shoulder blade. 

Her eyes fill with furious tears; she breathes deeply until they go away. 

“Reese -- the Vice President -- said you were doing this all for me,” she says lowly, voice crumpling. “Painted a wide target on yourself just to make me proud of you.”

Mac wonders if this is it, the flipping of the switch from Chief of Staff to First Lady. If sitting at the bedside of the President, waiting for him to wake up, beseeching him to just  _be okay_ is what First Ladies do. She’ll have to ask Abbey Bartlet, who called earlier but whose message she hasn’t been able to return yet. 

Her breath catching, she leans in closer, resting her forehead gently against his shoulder. “Please, just -- I love you. You don’t have anything left to prove to me. So just, please wake up.” 

Will’s only response is his continued shallow breaths.


	23. Chapter 23

He’s been home from the hospital three days; at first being in his own bed was as exciting as recovery can be, but now he’s just so bored he can feel his brain dribbling out his ears. Every few hours someone shuttles a stack of files over for him to read, or he takes a phone call, or someone comes for a meeting, but for the most part it’s just him, the Kennedy bedroom, and a lot of yelling at the make believe small claims court judges on daytime television.

The bedroom door opens, and he perks up.

Everyone knocks, except--

“I just got out of meeting with the AFL, the trucking industry, Sloan, and Charlie. I need a lobotomy,” Mac moans, flopping down next to him on the bed. There’s a fresh stack of files in her hands, but when she lands on her back they fly apart and scatter across the duvet. 

“Wanna trade?” 

He’d kill to get out of the mansion. Or something. Probably not that, least of all because he still can’t really lift his left arm. Or stand for more than a few minutes at a time. 

“I came to check on you,” she continues, sitting up and giving him a once-over.

Will sighs, rolling his stiff neck, staring up at the canopy and heavy curtains over the bed. Did he even brush his hair today? “There are like ten agents and six nurses within a twenty foot radius of me at all times. There’s a Navy surgeon on-call in the building. If something happened you’d be like... the eighth or ninth to know.” 

“Thanks,” Mac answers flatly, staring him down. “Fine then, I missed you, jackass. See you later.” 

Biting her lip (around a smile, she bursts out into a small giggle) she climbs over his legs and off the bed, nearly tripping as the heel of her pump catches on the comforter. 

“No... don’t go,” he moans, half-laughing. He catches her hand after his fingers take a brief detour to her pencil-skirt-clad ass. “I’m all alone. I need you.”

Smirking, she pulls her hand out of his weak grasp and tries to pull her skirt back down from the middle of her thighs. Will rolls his eyes, slowly bracing himself against the mattress, pushing up and out of bed as she replies, “You just said there’s a squadron of whatever around you -- get back into bed!” 

Shakily, he gets to his feet, grabbing for her waist. 

“I’m fine,” he blusters. Frowning, Mac places a single finger on his chest, and with all the strength of a stagnant breeze, pushes him back down to sit on the bed. “Or not.”

He realizes that he’s pouting, shrinking back down against the pillows. And definitely not because his back and chest are sore from the impact against their pillow-top mattress.

The expression on Mac’s face changes to something softer, and she sits down next to him on the bed, pulling the blankets back up over his legs. “Here, let me--”

“You sure you can’t stay?”

The pout is amplified a few notches, and he leans his face in closer to hers, refusing to break eye contact. 

MacKenzie looks at him with a modicum of pity that Will deems to be acceptable. “I have a meeting with the Joint Chiefs in twenty minutes,” she says, reaching behind him to grab his pillows and fluffing them back into shape. “And then an NSA briefing.” 

He wonders if she notices that she’s thrust her cleavage into his face, but of course she has – she lingers, keeping her breasts at level with his eyes for longer than necessary. Licking his lower lip, he buries his face against her sternum, smelling the floral notes of her perfume before taking a playful nip at the tops of her breasts.

“I think they’ve gotten bigger. Is that possible?” he asks, undoing one button and then another on her blouse to fit his hand over the cup of her bra. “Or am I just getting delusional locked away in here?”

(He thinks they’ve gotten bigger. Or her the laundry crew shrunk her bra.)

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she mumbles, swatting his hand down. “Or, well, delusional is always a good option when you’re involved.”

Face flushed slightly, she sits back, her spine notably straight.

“I could get you off, you know.” Will slides his hand up her thigh, his mind filling with a hundred different things he could be doing to her right now to keep them both occupied. He might not be cleared for sex for another month, but he has his uninjured arm and his mouth has never let her down, either. “Just because I’m out of commission doesn’t mean you can’t--”

“I think that’d take half the fun out of it,” Mac argues, catching his hand as it moves further up her leg.

He laughs, and then winces, pressing a hand to his ribs. “No, trust me, it really wouldn’t.” 

“You can’t even stand up.” 

“Semantics.” 

Lacing their fingers together, he tries to pull her closer – he really does just want her to stay. He’s not used to having her further than thirty feet away from him, not used to being removed from the briefings and the banter and fuck, at this point he’d settle for feeling slightly out of his depth in the Situation Room if it meant he could just sit with her for an hour and work together.

“How about a kiss?” she offers, cocking her head, squeezing his fingers.

She doesn’t want for an answer; bending to bring her mouth to his. It’s soft, and sweet, and he deepens it when he slides his good arm up her back so he can touch her hair. The corners of Mac’s lips fold up against his, her tongue darting out meet his before she pulls back, kisses him once more for good measure, and stands.

“Tease,” Will accuses, trying to clear his throat.

Mac arches a single eyebrow, buttoning her blouse back up, and walks out of their bedroom.

“See you at dinner?” he asks her retreating form.

“Take a nap,” she says, letting the Secret Service open the door for her, “and I’ll let you see a little bit _more_ of me _after_ dinner.”


	24. Chapter 24

By the time she reaches the Residence, she’s out of breath and cursing Jenna for being so goddamn efficient – and it does not help that her head has been spinning since she first realized this morning that she had not had a period in two months. And then that gasping realization had been followed by Lonny spiriting in a pregnancy test from CVS, and then a covert trip to the White House physician for confirmation through blood work.

The results came back less than an hour ago, and she had put them in a manila envelope, and then put _that_ on the stack of files and reports she was going to take over to Will for their afternoon briefing.

Until Jenna decided she was going to be _helpful._

The man was shot twice seven weeks ago. (For God’s sake, he’s still rarely up to leaving the Residence for anything but to adjourn to the Situation Room or address the nation.) She doesn’t need him keeling over from shock after deciphering the results of a blood test with her name on it, not now. Also there’s the matter of wanting to be able to tell him _herself._

Naturally, Will has the manila envelope and the test results in his hands when she pushes through the doors to their sitting room, already rambling a mile a minute. “Jenna wasn’t supposed to – I was supposed to take this stack over myself – and of course you’ve already opened—”

He’s up from the couch that has been his makeshift desk since he was well enough to leave their bed. But still in the pajamas she left him this morning when she had to run to make the first staff meeting and a briefing from the Sit Room crew, his hair still sticking up every which way. Lending to, Mac absently thinks, and overall expression that one could feasibly call “adorably baffled.”

“MacKenzie?” he asks, cautiously confused and almost asking a different question entirely: _Does this mean what I think this means?_

Biting her lip, she nods. “Yes.”

“You saw the doctor today?” he asks, brows furrowing. “These are the results of a blood test. With your name on them. And if I’m right here, these results are saying—”

Mac almost laughs, pressing a hand over the flat of her stomach. “Do you remember the night before – well, everything? We sent the staff home early, drank an entire bottle of wine between the two of us, fell into bed before we finished dinner?”

Will smiles, eyes lighting up brighter than they have in almost two months and seemingly forgetting the piece of paper in his hand. “Oh yeah.”

“Well I’ve been a bit busy the past seven weeks or so, you know. We’ve got a war on and…” Without warning, her mind takes her back to those first fragile hours when she didn’t know if he would live or die on the operating table, the never-ending hell of the ICU, the delicate weeks trying to care of him at home while balancing the needs of the West Wing and every politician in the district clamoring for an audience with their newly-martyred leader. All the while she just wanted to shout at all of them that Will is _her husband_ and he was _nearly goddamn killed for his office_ and if they would all kindly just fuck off. “…All of that. So I didn’t notice the symptoms right away. I was quite content to blame the fatigue and nausea on Congress.”

His face is transformed again by a look of confusion, followed by a spark of comprehension.

“MacKenzie, are you telling me—”

“I’m pregnant,” she blurts out, and then finds herself inexplicably giggling.

( _I want to have babies,_ she told him, in the same way she told him she’d like to have lungs that weren’t permanently scarred by Russian water torture and fungal pneumonia. _I want your babies. Fat, happy babies with your hair and my great intellect._ )

A smile splits his face.

“Yeah?”

“My hCG level is 220,000,” she continues, throwing out a hand to gesture towards the bloodwork; her shoulders sag with relief. “I’m seven weeks pregnant, which is really nine weeks, and we need to figure out how to see an OB without alerting the entire media gamut but um… we could do the first ultrasound once we figure that out and there are some scary blood tests—”

“How do you feel?” Will asks, letting the papers from the doctor drop to the coffee table and padding towards her.

“Great. So far,” she answers, letting him wrap his arms around her, pull her close. Wrinkling her nose, she places her hands on his chest. “I’m sure I’ll have some complaints when I’m in the stirrups trying to push a baby out of me.”

“So noted,” he says, a brief flash of panic appearing on his face. “…Putting you in the hospital right now and hooking you up to an epidural is premature, right?”

“Well, we sort of have to get you re-elected so that the American people can have the White House baby they’ve been screaming for.” A smirk tugs at the corners of her lips, and contentment (short-lived as she knows it’s going to be; she has a briefing with the Joint Chiefs at 4) surges through her body, warm and heady. He pulls her closer, swaying slightly. “You’re about to get a bump in the polls.”  

“You’re about to get a bump too,” he replies, eyes thoughtful. Leaning down, he kisses her gently, caressing the small of her back with his thumbs. “We’re having a baby.”

Just as gently, he tows her towards the couch, and sits.

“When?” he asks, voice dropping, looking up at her as he pulls her blouse out from the waist of her skirt and drawing the pads of his fingers over her belly.

She shivers, feeling the tremors of the universe folding in; their lives are about to change once more. Humming, she puts her hands on his shoulders as he explores her stomach with his fingers.

“January.”

Looking up at her again, his grin grows wider. “A January baby.”

“An Inaugural baby,” she teases, lifting an eyebrow.

He kisses the skin just below her belly button.

“We’d better win then.”

MacKenzie snorts fondly. “Well, I’d hope the father of my child wasn’t a loser…”


	25. Chapter 25

He first lifts her to sit on top of his desk, not bothering to move the files and memos on his blotter out of the way. Then he reacquaints himself with the feeling of impending sexual activity, and pulls their hips to fit tightly together, pressing his arousal into the inside of her thigh.

“We should, you know, go to the part of the building where we have a bed,” she murmurs, tilting her head back so he can better investigate her neck with his mouth.

He breathes her in – in the morning she smells like powder and perfume, the lingering hint of lavender conditioner and just a tiny bit of the laundry detergent the stewards use. But by this time, in the evening, he smells salt and sweat and all that remains of the deep floral perfume she uses is behind her ears. He licks it off her skin, and then fixes his lips over her jugular, sucking her pulse between his teeth.

Shivering, she locks her thighs around him, and sighs.

“It’s been almost five months, Mac,” he answers, sort of laughing but not kidding at all. His hands are on her, his fingers clenching into soft flesh and softer cashmere, rounded hips and swollen breasts and if she thinks he can let go for ten minutes she’s insane. “I really don’t think I can wait that long.”

“This is why I waited to tell you what the doctor said until the end of the business day, I want you to know,” she teases, hissing when his hand slide under the skirt of her wrap dress up to her panties. He finds her clit through the lace, and presses his thumb against. Her hips jerk into his hand, and she bites his shoulder. “Will, anyone could walk in on us. The senior staff is still here.”

“It’s a Friday,” he murmurs in her ear. “We haven’t bombed anyone, and the only campaign events this weekend are in DC so we’re not flying although I suppose the bedroom on Air Force One would make things easier for us but anyway – they can give us twenty minutes.”

The fingers on his other hand find the tie at the side of her dress, and undo it. Mac, wriggling closer, helps him pull the cups of her bra down below her nipples.

“Between my hormones and your medical situation, I really don’t think it’ll take us that long, but I admire your spirit.”

They have a brief staring contest as his hands come up to cup her breasts, his fingers gently rolling her nipples into points until she squirms, pelvis rolling into his. With a gasp, Mac tightens her fingers into his shirt, the sensation of her nails biting into his shoulder dulled by a thin layer of white cotton.

The contest continues as he lays her back onto the desk, her hand landing inches from their framed wedding portrait.

Sighing happily when her legs wrap around his waist, he leans down and circles his tongue around the hardened bud at the peak of her breast before drawing it into his mouth. She nods her assent, tangling her fingers in his hair. He keeps his ministrations soft, and careful, eventually releasing her breast with a prolonged suck. Then he reaches for the phone, and hits the intercom button.

“Kendra, Mac and I are heading to the Residence in a few. Don’t bother us anymore. Thanks.” 

Mac gives him a disbelieving kind of snort.

“There’s some symbolism here,” she jokes, referring to the Resolute desk with a sweeping sort of gesture.

“I’m not walking to the mansion while trying to hide an erection.” All arguments considered, he cannot be the only President to have had a quickie in the Oval to avoid an embarrassing situation on the portico.

She pretends to consider it, sliding her hands up and down his chest and stomach before reaching for the fly of his trousers. “Fair enough.”

“Have I told you yet today how gorgeous you are?” Will asks, and then groans when she pulls his erection out of his pants.

He counters by sticking his hand back up her dress, testing her wetness by pushing a finger into up to the knuckle, and crooking it.

“Sweet talker,” Mac gasps, arching her back. Will replaces his thumb on her clit, momentarily marveling at how wet she already is. “That feels nice,” she murmurs, pulling him down for a kiss. He pulls his fingers away from her, and puts himself at her entrance, teasing her. “More than nice,” she says, voice breathy and light.

As he pushes into her, Will’s last thoughts are something akin to _thank God for second trimester hormones,_ because when she shudders and comes as he finishes seating himself inside her, he doesn’t feel so bad about the fact that he’s not far behind her.


	26. Chapter 26

_ PRESIDENT AND MACKENZIE MCAVOY EXPECTING POTENTIAL WHITE HOUSE BABY FOLLOWING ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT.  _ She changes the channel; Wolf Blitzer and his panelists of experts are talking about how the baby will affect Will’s polls.  _MACKENZIE MCHALE MCAVOY EXPECTING FIRST CHILD WITH PRESIDENT, DUE LATE JANUARY._

She’s certain that if she changes the channel to FOX, she’ll find out it’s irresponsible for her to continue working as Chief of Staff and that her pregnancy is a ploy to bring social conservatives home from the Tea Party. They might even have Nina Howard on to gnash her teeth and rend her garments. Mac sticks with CNN for a few minutes, until Wolf starts talking about the assassination attempt again before pivoting to Zoey Bartlet’s abduction a decade ago. 

She turns the television off. 

It’s been eighteen weeks since a rabid Tea Partier shot Will twice in the chest. They caught him six hours after the Lisner shooting, so it really shouldn’t continue to bother her this much. It’s been nine years since Zoey Bartlet was drugged, kidnapped, and held for fifty hours by Qumari terrorists with the threat of execution.

The target on Will’s back is now on her stomach. 

How in  _the fuck_ did she not realize that until the press office released news of her pregnancy this morning? 

They waited until she was  _twenty weeks._ Not twelve, not fifteen. They waited until the rumors were good and unrelenting but not before then because she was scared, scared of losing the pregnancy and scared of what it’d mean for the campaign. Twenty weeks. In another twenty, her baby might be fair game to only God knows  _who_ if they win re-election in eight weeks. 

_ Fuck. Fuckfuck.  _ A numb hand skirts over her rounded stomach, and she struggles to breathe. 

Because it’s not like she wants to lose the election. But she’s just nearly lost Will and spent the past eleven weeks trying to not lose this pregnancy. 

She takes a breath and counts to ten, concentrating on feeling the baby kick against her palm, throwing elbows and knees and feet in protest of what Mac is sure the thoroughly unpleasant experience of being inside the womb of a woman having a goddamn panic attack. 

It’s a girl. 

She and Will decided against releasing anything but the minimum details to the press, but they decided to find out the sex for themselves. It’s a girl. They’re going to have a daughter. 

Their daughter is currently doing her level best at pummeling her shaking hands where they’re pressed against her stomach. 

Her eyes flicker to the clock. Five minutes until afternoon senior staff; there’s Xanax in the drawer of her desk, but she doesn’t want to take it. Will is in the Oval, but she doesn’t want to worry him. Because holy shit is he worried. And trying to recover from gunshot wounds. 

So she counts to ten again, and again.

She doesn’t hear the knock on the door, startling when Charlie pokes his head in. And he’s not startled at all. Closing the door with a quiet gentleness, he creeps over to her side, and kneels on the carpet next to her. Spins her chair so that she faces him, grasps her hands. Doesn’t ask her any questions; but ever since he pulled her out of the bowling alley he’s never really had to. 

By the time Jim and Maggie arrive she can breathe again. 


	27. Chapter 27

“They didn’t choose one that starts with a C?” 

Mac rolls her eyes. “It wasn’t _they,_ it was Lonny, and he chose it when he found out I’m, you know – and it starts with an M. Like mine. Since I am the one carrying the baby.”

Gesturing plainly to her midsection, she focuses more on the report she has carefully balanced atop her swollen belly than the conversation at hand. It’s three in the afternoon. Will always gets a bit unfocused at three in the afternoon, at least until some natural disaster or wayward senior staffer comes along to re-engage him until dinner and the evening national security brief. 

“Speaking of your Secret Service codename, why did yours never get changed?” He wanders a bit closer to the door to the Rose Garden, jamming his hands into his pants pockets.

“Because the Secret Service likes me better than you,” she answers, marking a line in the report to ask Sloan about. “Besides, Lonny was the one who had to smuggle me the pregnancy test while you were, you know, laid up in the Residence recovering from nearly dying. Lonny and I bonded.” 

Finding out she was pregnant seven weeks after the already potent emotional combo of getting married and watching her husband (the erstwhile President of the United States) take two rounds to the abdomen a few hours later… well, it was an _experience._ Especially since seven weeks out from the shooting, the reporters were not giving her an inch enough of privacy to pee on a stick or see her doctor without the entire fucking country speculating about the potential existence and/or political ramifications of a White House baby due shortly after the re-election campaign. 

Lonny really was a godsend. 

“Our child is going to be called _Munchkin,”_ Will complains, facing her with a mighty pout. _“_ MacKenzie, these sorts of things get circulated to the press.” 

“Sure thing, Cornhusker.” 

“I am in no way ashamed.” He cracks a smile, and she can’t help herself but to smile herself. “You know, if we take them up on their offer to do a campaign event at a home game next month, you’ll have to learn the Nebraska fight song.” 

“Honey, I think the Nebraskans know I’m not one of them. I mean, one, the accent, and two – Majesty.”

Three in the afternoon is good for one other reason: the baby is usually in some midday lull, just like her father, and Mac can work on something for an hour without feeling like her spleen is getting kicked in.

Will laughs, sitting down next to her on the couch. “That’s not just a comment on your regal attitude and tyrannical rule over the staff?”

“You really want to call your pregnant wife a tyrant to her face?” 

She arches an eyebrow at him. 

“No.” Smiling growing contrite, he reaches out to rub his hand over her stomach. 

Sighing, she settles back against the cushions as best she can, wondering for the umpteenth time if the press would have a field day with the idea of a bassinet in the Oval Office. “And stop complaining, Charlie’s codename starts with a C. You two match. Cornhusker and Cervantes.”

“His is a soft C,” Will argues, mostly for sport. 

“Fine, I’ll make sure our second kid gets a goddamn codename that coordinates with yours,” she deadpans. 

He pales, like she expected.

“Second?”

Giving her belly a complacent pat, she explains, “Yeah, since this one is already polling so well with values voters.” 


	28. Chapter 28

He remembers feeling lonely the first time he was elected President, as if he was formally removed from the rest of humanity to a pedestal all of his own. Which was fine, because the inside of his head already felt like a howling chasm between him and everyone else in his life. The first time he won was from Lincoln, Nebraska and he was sitting in a quiet hotel room with Charlie and a decanter of bourbon watching the votes come in on the television.

The White House, on the other hand, is _loud as fuck._

It’s just past 9 PM on the East Coast when Don pulls him out from the Roosevelt Room where he’s busy teasing Tess and Tamara about… something, he can’t entirely remember, but it started with him signing Tamara’s New York absentee ballot and ended with bourbon.

“Charlie and Mac wanna see you in the Oval.”

MacKenzie looks beautiful tonight. He keeps telling her that, mostly because she keeps shrugging him off. But her hair is curled, which he loves, and her face is camera ready and she’s wearing a designer dress which is worth every dollar spent on it. That, and Will is kind of, sort of, really starting to come around to the fact that he thinks that pregnancy is stunning, on his wife.

Second trimester glow, or whatever the books call it.

But she’s not exactly _glowing_ when he walks into the Oval.

“What?”

Charlie hands him a drink.

_“What?”_

Charlie looks at Mac, who solemnly clears her throat. “Nebraska. The press will be reporting it in a few minutes, but we wanted you to know first—”

“I lost Nebraska?” he asks. His heart plunks down into his stomach.

 _Not again._ It hurt enough the first time around, when he was trying to claw his way from having skipped the primaries to being relevant in the general and playing to left and center so hard that he lost most of the religious right, but it made sense then even if he was sitting in Lincoln knowing that his home state didn’t want to send him to the White House. And he knows, he does know. He’s still the guy the religious right hates. And they knew it would be close, and he has Mac now, he has a family now. He’s just _still_ the disowned native son, after everything he’s done.

Mac smirks. “Not exactly.”

His brows furrow together. “I _won_ Nebraska?”

Giggling, she runs a hand over her stomach, and bites her lip. Charlie cracks a smile, reminding him of the tumbler in his hand. “Drink up, sir.”

Which is when he hears it – cheers rising up to a dull roar in the West Wing. Then, following that, the chorus of _Come a Runnin’ Boys_ being sung at a shout. He realizes he must just be blinking absently at them, when Mac leans up onto her tiptoes and kisses him on the mouth, takes him by the hand, and tows him back out into the hall.

“You won Nebraska, Mr. President,” she says, eyes as bright as the smile tugging at her lips.

He wraps his arms around her in the middle of the hallway, bending her back over his forearm the best he can with her twenty-eight weeks pregnant, kissing her soundly with not a care of the fact that they’re surrounded by staff and press photographers.

_From the sons of Nebraski now it's coming near with a rising cheer—_

(Four different pictures of the kiss wind up on four different news outlets twitters and livestream of the election coverage, within minutes. When later asked for comment, Will tells CNN that his wife delivered him his home state and in the next ten weeks will be delivering his child, why shouldn’t he kiss her in front of God and country?)


	29. Chapter 29

He’s heard it before. And he’s more than certain Mac has heard it too; she’s had to. She’s decorated by four countries (including the one they’re currently trying to run) and by NATO, the UN, by the CIA. She _was_ the worst thing. The worst thing happened to _her,_ for _him,_ two months before he was first elected president and three weeks after he pulled ahead in the polls. 

To this day, Will wonders what Matt Santos and Nancy McNally said to Mac, to get her to do it. There are ugly moments where Will genuinely wonders if his name was bandied about, and then strikes the line of thinking entirely. Mac is too noble, too patriotic, too dutiful to do something for a single man instead of the greater good. 

She did it, became the dead woman walking, and then followed her orders: to survive, at any cost. (She did, and spent months recovering from it in a ward in Walter Reed, as his transition team worked barely ten miles away.) The cost, it took him too long to realize, was remembering how to _live._

Now, on the eve of his second Inauguration (and how this day will stand in the media as a study in contrasts with his first Inauguration; no longer the party’s stooge golden boy but a man of his own, with a wife of his own, a baby due any second, and a notably loyal staff who also double as a crack team of ragtag dreamers) he wonders what costs have yet to be incurred. And he knows, _he knows,_ that if Mac was awake she’d laugh at him and call him an idiot, remind him that he was _shot_ nine months ago. 

(And he’d counter that they’re back at war with Russia and nearly at war with China, too. 

It would go on, and on, for at least an hour because MacKenzie knows he’s becoming more and more lost in his head, that as her due date draws closer – three days away now – Habib is making more and more visits to the White House under auspicious that increasingly resemble cheesecloth and the press is going to see through them any day now.)

_ I’m fine, _ she would say. _Do you want me to not be fine? I’m sure I could find something to yell at you about._

From the other side of the Presidential bedroom, he looks at her lone form in their bed. She’s asleep, for now. All she can get at 39 weeks is an hour or two at a time, if she’s lucky, before getting too uncomfortable and waking up. 

Cracked ribs, skull fracture, collapsed lung. And so on; he’s memorized the reports. Both the CIA files and the ones Chigorin released last year in an attempt to humiliate him, through her.

(As fucking if.)

And any time now she’s going to go through labor and delivery and birth his child. (Who he loves, as much as someone can love a bump under their hand. Who will grow up under immense scrutiny, with a security detail, and will never have a shot at blissful obscurity.) MacKenzie is the mother of his child.

He hopes that one day he’s going to look at MacKenzie and not feel so guilty. 


	30. Chapter 30

It’s not until he’s helping her out of her evening gown that she admits that she felt the first contraction during the Inaugural Parade, but wrote off the next few hours of birth pangs as Braxton-Hicks and it wasn’t until she sat down with Leona and Becca at the second Inaugural Ball that she became wholly convinced (by Leona, who has a diamond-encrusted dinner watch and a son, even if he is Reese, and talked her into believing that this is actual _labor, but I suppose after being tortured by Chigorin’s specialists contractions are barely a blip on your pain scale_ ) that this was well and truly it. 

“Jesus, MacKenzie,” he murmurs, letting satin and silk fall to the hospital floor.

“At least it didn’t start while I was trying to hold the Bible and you were, you know, taking that oath thing,” she says with a sigh, bracing herself with one hand on the bed while trying to remove all the bobby pins from her hair with the other. “Not that I don’t think the press hasn’t already noticed we haven’t made it to balls number four and five, and six is about to be missed as well… why did we let Don and Sloan talk us into going to seven balls?” 

“Here, let me.” 

Will ignores her remark; finishing knotting the ties of her hospital gown, he takes over letting her hair down from its smooth chignon, saving the elastic so that she can put it back up in a ponytail. 

“Although, now I’m thinking,” she continues, “If my water had broken there instead of in the limo I think it might have frozen to my legs. Now we have to send the car out for cleaning, and I think poor Lonny almost had a heart attack.” 

That is very far from the truth, and they both know it.

(It’s Will who almost had the heart attack.)

He frowns. “Do you want something to wash your face with? Your make up–” 

“Hm… at least we got a dance in,” Mac muses, letting herself sit gently at the edge of the bed. “Maybe it’ll give us some press cover. Fewer photographers camping out in the ER.” 

It’s then that Will realizes that she’s rambling because she’s nervous; the media has been tossing around her pain endurance resume for weeks now. She’s nervous she’ll crack during labor and delivery. He has no idea how to convince her that it’s okay if she does; she’s endured so much. She’s already strong. She’s proved it. 

Stepping between her legs, he pulls her to rest her head on his shoulder. 

“Or I could just sic the 101st Airborne on them.” 


	31. Chapter 31

It was a cold when he and the staff left for China, and he didn’t want to leave. He knew this would happen, but Mac had kissed him and told him to go to the summit and try to win her a Nobel Peace Prize. 

Air Force One lands at Andrews’ just past five in the morning, and his wife has pneumonia again. This, he thinks, is why there’s a protocol. Because there are surgeons and nurses and Charlotte’s nannies and his own powerful neuroses, and that’s not even factoring in Mac’s health and wellbeing, which need to be the priority. 

Air Force One to Marine One and a quick jog up the South Lawn, leaving the staff to dispense into the parking lot or the West Wing. 

No chest drains this time, not yet. Motherhood has made MacKenzie more circumspect, and she requested her physician days earlier than she would normally. No chest drains, she told him. Just IV antibiotics after the test came back gram positive, cough syrup with codeine, and oxygen. No chest drains, no broken ribs. 

Not that it’s particularly comforting. 

Will shrugs off his jacket on the way up to the second floor of the mansion. The Secret Service pulls open the doors to the presidential bedroom – he finds one of Charlotte’s nannies falling asleep in a chair, and dismisses her to find somewhere to sleep until her next shift. 

The bedroom is filled with the soft glow of the television screen, the hum of CNN on low volume, and the pale yellow light of morning. 

MacKenzie is where he thought he’d find her, on the bed, dozing. 

And on top of her is Charlotte, eight months old, sleeping much more deeply. Her small limbs twitch at irregular intervals, small puffs of breath passing through her lips. He stops to watch Charlotte’s fingers clutch into MacKenzie’s t-shirt, let go, and then tighten again.

The arm without the IV in it is draped across Charlotte’s back, Mac’s hand cradling the back of her head.

Silently, Will lowers himself onto the bed, scooping the baby off of Mac and against his own chest. Charlotte snuffles, but doesn’t wake, and burrows into his shirt. Mac, on the other hand, jolts awake. 

“Just me,” he shushes her, adjusting the oxygen mask on her face before cupping his hand against her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her temple. “We just got in. Want me to take her or do you want me to hang out a bit?” 

Exhaling deeply, she pulls the mask off her face.

“Stay. Tell me how it went.”

Will smirks, and kisses the top of Charlotte’s head. “Like you don’t already know everything that happened. I have no doubt in my mind that Jim has been telling everything. Traitor.” 

Slowly, she smiles. 

“I still have codeword clearance, thank you.” 

He lies down on their bed and starts recounting the tale of the Chinese Foreign Minister trying to open negotiations by lying about the amount of missiles in North Korea’s possession. 


	32. Chapter 32

When the Democrats took back the House of Representatives, Will knew some things wouldn’t be as easy as they were when Leona was Speaker. (Not that Leona ever made anything particularly _easy_ on him, but they _are_ Republicans cut from the same cloth even if they occasionally enjoyed political bloodsport and going for the other’s throat – conservatives are, of course, notorious for eating their own young.) He just didn’t expect Lucas Pruitt (D-CA) to be such a fucking goddamn _asshole._ But Will supposes he might have counted on that; he did send Pruitt back to California after the 2012 presidential race. 

“To be honest Mr. President, if the White House does not cooperate with this legislation you can expect that we will find a way to stick it as an amendment on every bill you want passed in Congress from this day on to kingdom come–” 

He just _really didn’t fucking expect_ his district to require a special election four months after the _actual_ election. If the liberals could just keep it in their pants, he wouldn’t be dealing with this bullshit. 

And if Mac wasn’t in Pakistan… 


	33. Chapter 33

Charlotte McAvoy is a very precocious two-year-old. Precocious enough to, like her father before her, enjoy slipping her security detail and the small cadre of nannies employed to mind her while both her parents are occupied with matters of state. 

It’s not like finding her way to the Oval Office is _hard._ Mommy or Daddy or Uncle Jim or Aunt Maggie or Mr. Lonny or  _someone_ usually takes her there at least once a day. She knows the way.

This time, as fast as her little legs will carry her, before her nanny can realize she’s gone. 

The West Wing staffers know to get out of her way, waving their hellos to the first daughter. Some frowning thoughtfully at her being unattended, but the ones who would actually stop her and pick her up all currently being occupied in meetings with House leadership in the Roosevelt Room and the Oval. 

The door to the Oval is open when she finds her way to the secretary’s bullpen; all her aunties and uncles are milling about with reports and dark looks twisting their faces. (All except Uncle Don, who looks as faintly amused, and as resentful as ever.) And either way, Miss Jenna told her that she has “walk-in privileges” like Mommy and Uncle Jim, whatever those are. 

Then she hears yelling.

Which doesn’t scare her; Mommy and Daddy yell at people all the time, but never at her. 

So she keeps running, her tightly-laced sneakers padding on the thick carpeting. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” 

(Lunch, which he had promised to eat with her, had been missed for the sake of salvaging what was supposed to be a bipartisan measure to save social security, but had rapidly become an attempt by Pruitt and his cronies to try to threaten the White House with the money from their big Pharma and Insurance company donors.

Charlotte doesn’t quite _care_ about who’s getting yelled at; Mommy has been away since Tuesday and so she wants her father, and she wants him _now_.) 

To Will’s credit, his momentary look of confusion is only that, and stands from his chair behind the Kennedy desk as his daughter barrels towards him. He catches her as she tries to take out his knees in greeting, swinging her up into his arms. And then smirks at the look of unease on Pruitt’s features.

“Sending in your toddler to break-up the negotiations?” he asks, but the accusation falls flat with the fear etched plainly into his features; he regards Charlotte as if she was a subhuman creature with particularly sharp teeth or prone to carrying disease. 

Will wraps his arms tightly around his daughter; she squeals delightedly, wrapping her legs around his side. 

He kisses her cheek, ignoring Pruitt. (He might describe his posture here as defensive, or probably more _protective._ Lucas Pruitt comes into _his_ White House…) “Honey, why aren’t you with Miss Sophie?” 

“Missed you,” she answers, kicking her legs into him and burying her face into his chest. 

Glaring at Pruitt and his entourage over the top of Charlotte’s blonde head, he sits back down behind his desk. 

“So are we gonna just talk around the… child?” Pruitt asks, voice saturated with disdain.

“Nah,” Will replies, reaching for his desk drawer, opening it, and pulling out a box of crayons that Charlotte immediately reaches for. Taking a page out of MacKenzie’s playbook, Will gives her the draft legislation that Pruitt shoved in his face hours ago, and lets her start scribbling all over it in smearing purples and blues. Entirely aware, of course, that both his staff and the Speaker’s are watching him. 

Pruitt stutters, face turning red.

Will looks straight at him, unperturbed. “I think we’re finished here, Mr. Speaker. You want a fight? You’ll get one – this is her future you’re trying to screw around with. Now get out of my White House.”


	34. Chapter 34

He wraps his arm around her shoulders the moment they’re in Air Force One and out of view of the press. It’s been a long two weeks – negotiations, both above board and in back rooms, and military standoffs and trade agreements – leading up to what might go down in history as the Astana Peace Accords. Then end of what might go down in American textbooks, at least, as Word War III. She’s exhausted, and on-edge, and so anxious that she’s crawling out of her skin and her bottle of Xanax is completely depleted.

The moment they’re in the air, MacKenzie feels herself relax for the first time in fourteen days.

And can finally feel some of the elation that everyone else has at the accords.

But mostly she’s just exhausted, over-stimulated, and misses her daughter. (Under absolutely no uncertain circumstances was Charlotte coming to Astana with them, let alone Kazakhstan. Instead they dropped her off in London with her parents, who arrived in DC for a visit of their own earlier in the day. Or night. MacKenzie can’t be fucked to do the time zone calculus at the moment.) At the moment, she fears that exhaustion is going to win.

She’s hardly slept two hours a night. She couldn’t. Not without nightmares, anyway, and there are only so many times one can wake up screaming.

Especially when you’re the First Lady of the United States and have Secret Service agents poised to answer every scream.

“Hey.”

She realizes she’s just been staring blankly at the full sized bed in the Presidential suite.

Realizes, and then continues staring.

“Honey, do you need… help?” Will asks, approaching her from behind. Anyone else and she’d probably flinch, at the least. Hit them, more likely. But not Will – when his hands land on her shoulders she merely sighs, leaning back against him.

Arching her back, she sighs again. “I need sleep.”

“Any particular reason you’re not getting into bed, then?”

“My mind won’t shut off.” She made President Chigorin look her in the face and shake her hand. It was an impulsive decision as he and the Chinese Premier were signing the treaty in full view of hundreds of members of the international press. And now it’s a three-day story with no signs of slowing down. “I think it’s really over this time.”

To his credit, Will doesn’t say anything. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he rests his chin on top of her head.

“I miss Charlotte,” she whispers. “I want to go home.”

“We’re going home. We’re in the air for twenty-five hours, and then we’ll get to see her.” She feels him move his head so his mouth is at her ear. “You’ve got plenty of time to sleep. I advocate that you sleep for the whole day, but I doubt that’s going to happen. So let’s just… lie down for a bit. So you can feel human again.”

“I want be happy.” But she can’t quite muster up the energy – she can barely muster up the energy to lift her hands from her side and place them atop of his where they’re clasped at her middle. “We just ended the war. I should feel happy.”

Instead she feels a yearning. For their daughter back home with her hair like spun sunshine, golden laugh and crooked smile. Small chubby limbs and happy half-formed sentences and bright hazel eyes. And she keeps yearning. Not because Charlotte isn’t enough, but because she is one of five and Will is one of four and her worst fear is that Charlotte will be lonely one day and when they leave the White House she doesn’t think she’ll be able to handle the quiet, but she could handle another baby to love.

The war is over.

They haven’t been _trying_ , but they haven’t been preventing either. Not since Charlotte was eighteen months old. It’s been another eighteen months since.

She had a miscarriage, at six weeks.

The war is over and she wants her second baby, god fucking dammit. The family she dreamt of while Chigorin ordered Russian intelligence agents to keep her captive in a basement in Astana, drowning her in ice baths and shocking her with a cattle prod. The _delusion_ of a family with Will; it was the fantasy that kept her sane long enough to escape and survive even after the logical half of her mind had given herself up for dead.

“MacKenzie, you’ve gotten maybe twenty hours of sleep since we got here. I think the only emotion anyone could physically feel at this level of tired is, well…” Blinking hard, she forces herself back to the moment at hand, to Will squeezing her more tightly. “I’m just amazed you’re still standing.”

She laughs, and makes the decision to step out of her pumps. “Not for long. Lay with me for a bit?”

“Yeah, of course—”

He seems alarmed when she accepts his answer in the positive as a reason to pull him down on top of her, into the cradle of her legs.

“Mac? I thought you wanted to sleep.”

Arching up under him, she undoes the zipper on the back of her skirt. “I need to clear my head first. Do you think the staff can spare you another twenty minutes?”

“They all know to knock, and then wait for an answer,” he says, helping her out of her blouse.

Mac snorts. “Yeah, I think Neal’s gotten that image burned into his head at this point.”

Carding her fingers through his hair, she pulls him down for a searing kiss. Or as searing as one can make a kiss after almost twenty-four hours without sleep, but regardless. Mac’s pretty sure that Will’s already figured that he’s going to have to do the heavy lifting this round.

“Maybe we should get a Do Not Disturb thing to hang on the door.” Nibbling at her chin, he pulls her skirt down her thighs.

Once her bottom half is cleared of clothing, she wraps her legs around his hips, pressing her heels into his hamstrings. “Isn’t that what the Secret Service is for?”

“I’m telling Lonny you said that.”

He smiles down at her, wide and in the clear, and she feels lighter than she has since the failure of Operation Genoa.

“Okay, stop talking now.”

(It’s time to actually start trying.)


	35. Chapter 35

A month later, two pink lines show up on one of the tests shoved under her sink in the master bathroom. 

Because this, apparently, is how the universe works for MacKenzie McHale.

It tests her, then it laughs at her, and then sometimes it gives her what she prays for so fast it makes her head spin. 


	36. Chapter 36

The handle clicks, the hinges silently working as the door swings open. Will doesn’t look up from the intelligence report he’s reading, assuming its Jim coming to deliver the memo from State about the refugee crisis in Kundu.

“Hey.”

He looks up to see his wife leaning in the doorway to the Oval from Jim’s office.

“Hey.” Dropping his pen, he stands, buttoning his jacket. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

The expression on her face is not particularly encouraging. A quick assessment speaks to a strong brew of hesitation, alarm, and euphoria. The first two make his initial analysis lean towards this state of hers being in relation to something Chigorin has done _now_ , and the last… could also be about Russia.

“I um… I have a doctor’s appointment,” she says, attempting and failing at nonchalance. “I think you might want to come with me.”

His pulse leaps. “Are you feeling okay?”

Lifting her eyebrows into her bangs, she folds her arms under her chest, frowns, and inclines her head in a way that pointedly conveys internal deliberation. And then she cracks a lopsided grin, stepping further into the Oval and closing the door behind her.

Will finds himself smiling, too.

(There aren’t many good reasons to go to the doctor. He’s pretty certain he discovered all of them when Mac was pregnant with Charlotte.)

“Headaches,” she begins, momentarily worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “Fatigue. Sore breasts. And I mean we know my cycle is never much to go by but we had the tests from last time, so I took one and—”

His heart pounds wildly against his breastbone. “Are you telling me—?”

With an airy little laugh, she nods. Shrugging, she moves to stand in front of his desk and with that, his feet jerk up from the carpet and towards her. A faltering smile takes brief hold of her face when he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. Reminding himself to _breathe,_ he gazes down at her.

Again, she laughs.

“Considering our schedules and the last time I had a period, it had to have been on the flight home from Astana, which puts me at about six weeks.” Mac clutches at him harder, and they sway on the spot. “So I wanted to do a blood test, so we have an idea of – well, you know. Before we get too excited.”

“Okay but I’m gonna tell you straight out that I’m excited,” he replies gently. “When is the OB coming?”

With Charlotte, the results of the blood test were so strong that they had the doctor looking for twins. With the other… they had a tense few days of hope and strained silence, and then the bleeding starting. In the fucking _Netherlands,_ of course.

“She had an emergency C-section to perform around noon, but after that’s finished. Someone from her office called to say that it should only be another forty minutes or so.”

“I’ll be there,” he assures her. Or rather, in a way that he hopes is reassuring. “Six weeks, is that too early for an ultrasound?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Mac shrugs, fanning her fingers out over his chest. “It’ll just be nice and uncomfortable for me and the baby will look more like a tadpole than a human, but it’ll be nice to see everything. Know that everything looks like it should. If everything looks like it should.”

She bites her lip again, looking down and away.

“Okay.” His eyes dart around the office, landing on one of the couches. Cinching his hands around her waist, he moves them until they’re at the lip of the couch cushions, and then pulls her down with him to sit on them. “We could put you on bedrest right now, you know. Hire twenty-four hour a day nurses, put you in traction.”

Furrowing her brows, Mac shakes her head. “What would traction do?”

“Tilt your pelvis up.”

“Right.”

It earns him a smile.

“So… April?” he asks, lifting a hand to cup her cheek.

“Yeah. April. The fifteenth, if my math is right,” she replies absently. There’s a warm fluttering in chest at the entirely expected fact that she’s already figured out the due date. “There’s not much there yet, you know.”

“You’re feeling okay?” “No cramping, no spotting?”

“I feel… besides the usual symptoms, I feel pretty great.” “I’m sure I’ll revise that when morning sickness hits in a few weeks. If morning—”

“When.” He rubs his thumb over her cheekbone, wondering how much overthinking time she had in between the positive test and walking over here. Though he knows he’ll get his own in, probably during the doctor’s appointment. Ultrasounds and needles tend to do that to him – whereas they have the opposite effect on MacKenzie. “When it hits.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he flinches – she was supposed to needle him about this being all his fault. “I wasn’t going to tell you until I got the results of the blood test back but then I remembered that that’s kind of stupid, so—”

Well, yeah.

“You don’t have to apologize. You be nervous. I’m nervous too. It’s my job to be the director of—”

“Do not.” A spark of _something_ electric and lively appears in her eyes.

He smirks.

“I said it a year ago and I’m gonna say it again,” he tells her, slow and certain. “You’ve already given me more than I’d ever hoped for. What happens, happens. I love you. I love Charlotte. And whatever happens next, I’ll be there every step of the way.”

Mac gives him a reluctant smile, her hand coming up from her lap to curl around the one he’s still resting against her face. “I really want this baby.”

“I do too.”

Which she already knows, but Will thinks that it’s something worth saying out loud.

“I mean, I’ve had the one miscarriage. But I keep thinking what if there were others that I just wrote off as late periods?” she wonders, eyes wide and apprehensive. “I mean something like fifty percent of pregnancies end in the first eight or twelve weeks. With Charlotte we didn’t find out until nine and we were too naïve to think that – what if it doesn’t take? I mean, I _know_ what happens. We know what happens.”

Charting her jaw, he tries to think of something constructive to say. But he knows that until the blood test comes back with conclusive evidence of things one way or another, Mac’s anxiety will not rest.

He’s seen her walk into diplomatic negotiations cold, but obviously this is something different.

Which makes it mean all the much more.

“Do you wanna lie down until the doctor gets here?” he asks.

“No.”

“Wanna hang out here?”

“You think I’m neurotic.”

“Yeah, but pretty rightly so,” he points out, playing at indifference. “You have a good batting average.”

“Sports metaphors don’t work on me.”

“GPA then.”

Snorting, she rolls her eyes. “A 2.0 is barely passing, Billy.”

Telling her that Ds get degrees would probably be most unhelpful, and regardless they both graduated from college _summa cum laude._ And there’s nothing he can promise her right now, and as much as _he_ would like to freak the fuck out and unearth all his scary research from the gaping dark months of anxiety (and joy, and all the other things too) before Charlotte was born, he can do that later. When it’s his turn.

“Okay, you know what?” he asks, moving both of their hands into his lap, and then looks at the clock.

He needs to tell Jenna that his afternoon is going to be rearranged. But he figures she won’t mind – she loves knowing national secrets. And then after the doctor is the small matter of disclosing the pregnancy to the Secret Service. And _not_ disclosing it to the press.

(Again, the last one is usually Mac’s game.)

She sighs. “What?”

Exhaling softly, he leans in to kiss her. It’s a slight touch, the barest meeting of lips, and with his thumb on her wrist he can feel her heartrate slow.

“You be neurotic. And scared. And I’ll just be here,” he says, pulling back. Then shrugs. “And eventually, we can be excited, once we’re past the pure psychic terror of the first trimester.”

Rolling her eyes again, she swats at his chest.

Then, with a shaky breath, leans forward until her forehead touches his shoulder.

“I’m pregnant. Holy shit.”


	37. Chapter 37

“Wait, what?” he stammers.

Ten week appointment: ground floor of the Residence, the White House physician’s office, and the maternal-fetal specialist that they can trust to make her visits discrete and unseen by the press gang. The ultrasound machine is a fairly recent addition to the physician’s office, necessitated by the first White House pregnancy in over a hundred years. And now helping conceal the second one.

Although, it now seems, not that it will be easily concealed for very long.

“There are two heartbeats,” the obstetrician says, moving the ultrasound wand over Mac’s belly. Up on the monitor is the clear picture of one ten-week fetus… “Right _there_ is Baby A, who we saw at your six week scan and here… _here_ is Baby B, trying their best to hide behind their brother or sister.” …and then as the wand changes angle on Mac’s pelvis, a second amniotic sac comes into view… and the tiny black and white image of a second baby.

_A second baby. Twins._

Vaguely, Will is thankful that he’s already sitting down. More directly, he’s staring open-mouthed at the screen, perhaps holding Mac’s hand a bit too tightly. “Holy fucking shit,” he mutters absently, trying to force the idea of twins from a possibility into their new reality.

“I’ll give you two a moment.”

The doctor freezes the image on the ultrasound monitor and stands, handing Mac a cloth to clean her stomach off with.

Blinking rapidly, Will tries to snap out of his daze. “Wait, you’re saying – we’re having twins?”

“Yes Mr. President. Mrs. McAvoy,” the doctor affirms, smiling slightly. Probably laughing at them, Will thinks, but that’s fine. He’s only the leader of the free world. “Congratulations.”

“Everything’s – everything is good, though?” he asks, looking at Mac whose face is rather blank as she robotically cleans the ultrasound gel off her stomach. She’s still processing; he’s already progressed to freaking. “You’re sure?”

He’s heard the horror stories. He went looking for them when Mac was pregnant with Charlotte, made sure he was prepared for all eventualities.

The obstetrician pauses at the doorway, thoughtfully filling out Mac’s chart. 

“Well, I’ll admit Mrs. McAvoy’s hCG levels at the last appointment did lead me to suspect it was twins, but I could only find one amniotic sac on the ultrasound. But that was also at six weeks and with her first pregnancy her hCG levels were also very strong, very high.” The doctor’s eyes flicker to Mac, who is slowly coming out of her mask of unfazed calm and moving steadily into manic eye-gleam panic. “But it is definitely twins, I can hear two strong heartbeats and we’ve got two fetuses on the scan.”

Almost to prove the point, she prints out the sonogram and hands it to them before switching off the monitor.

“So what does this mean?” Mac asks, staring at the glossy printout, holding carefully with her fingertips, and then bites her lip.

“Well, Mrs. McAvoy, you did have some problems with your blood pressure towards the end with Charlotte so I imagine we’ll be running into that again, but earlier. The scar tissue in her lungs could cause problems that it didn’t cause with a singleton pregnancy.” Will, trying to listen carefully, can hardly breathe. He grabs for Mac’s hand again, squeezing her fingers until she hisses. “Then there’s the usual gamut of risks that come with multiples, and your age – increased risk for syncope, increased fatigue, increased discomfort, increased risk of preterm birth. You might need to go on bed rest. But, this is the White House. You’ll receive the best medical care out of any woman in the country.”

Will is also becoming reacquainted with the distinct sensation of passing out. _Two babies._ He’s glad that this _didn’t_ happen the first time. Nine weeks out from being shot, he definitely would have passed out. He nearly did anyway; the first time they saw Charlotte on the ultrasound he got so lightheaded he saw stars.

“I’ll step out.”

The door closes behind the doctor. And logically, Will realizes he and Mac really only have ten or fifteen more minutes before someone notices they’re both missing from their usual posts and not in any meetings.

“There are two of them. Holy shit.” He moves in closer to where she’s still laying on the exam table, trying to look at the grainy sonogram. “MacKenzie—”

“Yeah.”

She nods, movements jerky and awkward.

“Are you—”

It’s not until he watches her open her mouth, close again, and then close her eyes that he realizes that she’s been trying not to cry. The corners of his mouth turn upwards a moment after hers do; he feels relief flood his veins, releasing tension he didn’t realize he was holding. It’s overwhelming, he knows, but he’s also not the one _having_ these children and if Mac is happy, then…

Tenderly drawing the backs of his fingers down her cheeks, he kisses her forehead.

“We’ll get our three. Like used to talk about,” she says, turning her face to kiss him on the mouth. Then she gives him an eye-crinkling smile. “We’re not gonna be able to hide this for five months like we did last time.”

Will laughs. “I’ll talk to Lonny about increasing your security detail.”

“Twins.” Shaky now, she exhales and brings the scan closer to her face. “Okay.”

Those are _their_ little two amorphous blobs, he thinks. They definitely have it coming to them. But if they can run the country, he hopes that it means they can handle three kids under four. “I love you,” he murmurs when she traces her fingers over the sonogram, looking for legs and torsos and heads and arms.

“If I have to go on bed rest can we find a way to move the Situation Room to the Residence?” she asks.

“Probably not.”

Will figures that she probably is half-serious; they’ll have to figure something out so that when she’s hugely pregnant she’s not cooped up on the second floor of the mansion and going out of her mind.

(He doesn’t let the possibility enter his mind that the twins might come before Mac gets the chance to complain about how big she is, that one of the twins might not make it, that the whole thing might go terribly awry. Not yet, anyway. He knows himself, the thoughts will come. But he won’t let them spoil this moment.

They talked about having three kids. It was over ten years ago that they had the conversation, and like with most things where they’re involved it’s coming to fruition half-improvised and half-compromised and with a large dose of crazy.)

“We’re really having two more. At once.” She turns to look at him again, eyes soft and smile wide. “We’re insane.”

Then he’s laughing again, almost unable to stop – it’s absurd. Delightfully absurd. He has no idea how they’re going to explain this to Charlotte. He has no idea how they’re going to balance two infants and a three year old in the White House. He has no idea how he’s going to do this, in his fifties. “Yes we are, and I love you.”

Mac moves their hands to rest over her belly.

“I love you too.”


	38. Chapter 38

Mommy’s not feeling well, because of the babies in her tummy. And Miss Sophie, her nanny, has the flu and her other nanny, Miss Lauren, is out of the country on vacation. So Daddy waved off the housekeeper’s offer to watch her until a babysitter could come in, tossed her up over his shoulder, and sang  _A Hunting We Will Go_ the whole way from the Residence to the Oval Office.

Charlotte figured out how to work the little door at the front facade of the Resolute desk pretty quickly.  _Open, closed. Open, closed._ The door slams shut and then springs back to  _thwap_ against the front of the desk. 

“Sweetheart,” he warns her. “If you break that it’s coming out of your college fund.” 

“No,” she laughs. 

Will feels her climbing up his knees, and looks down. Charlotte’s been content to color and play with her blocks under her desk for as long as he can probably ask from a three year old, and is now staring wide-eyed up at him waiting to be paid attention to.

Which is fair, considering the amount of meetings she let him get through, and the one with Sloan and the CBO that she thankfully interrupted demanding a snack. 

“Yes?” he asks, pulling her up into his lap. 

“Do you have anything else I can color on?” 

Kendra gave her a sheaf of printer paper an hour ago, but he knows how his daughter can draw her way through a mile of coloring books. So he scrounges around the reports on his desk, looking for anything that’s going to wind up being tossed back onto Jenna’s desk to be recycled. “Do you want Senator Haffley’s legislative agenda? I was gonna throw it in the trash but I think you might be able to make it worth something.” 

Will holds up the report for Charlotte’s inspection, helping her hold the large (and pompous and self-aggrandizing) report in her small chubby hands. Humming, she tries to flip through the pages 

“Is Senator Haffley killing the party?” she asks looking up his chest at him, only as innocent as a three year old can be. 

Frowning, he looks down at her. “Who told you that?”

(There are things that he needs to, you know, not be repeated to members of the GOP. Although he supposes this may be one of those stories he winds up repeating over and over again to everyone who will listen. Which is everyone, considering the Oval Office tends to hold a rather  _captive_ audience.)  

“You. You said it to Mommy last night, when you let me sleep in yours and Mommy’s bed.”

“You little faker.” Astonished, he tickles her sides until she drops the report, folding on herself as she shrieks with laughter. “You weren’t sleeping?” 

“Nu-uh,” she answers, still giggling. “And you called him a rhino, Daddy. But I looked. He doesn’t have a horn. Rhinos have horns, Daddy. He looks like a frog.” 

Will truly wants to admonish her, but his face crumples into a smile. Laughing quietly, he pulls on one of Charlotte’s pigtails, kisses her cheek, and sends her back down to color at his feet for a little while longer. It should be (or he thinks it will be) almost time for her midday nap. 

“So noted, Charlie,” he says, cupping the top of her head as it passes under the lip of the desk. 

When he looks down to check on her twenty minutes later, she’s dead asleep with the capped end of a marker in her mouth and her head on his shoe. Snorting softly, he pushes his chair back and carefully extracts her. Grabbing a stack of military briefings, he carries her to one of the couches in the center of the Oval and sits, pillowing her head on his thigh and tucking a cashmere throw around her body. 

MacKenzie, looking distinctly less nauseous than she did when he left her this morning, joins him for lunch shortly after that. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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